IMG_0070What’s it all about?

The Echo is the sequel to The Explorer which I reviewed here not 24 hours or so ago. It is Book Two of the Anomaly Quartet (which means hurrah! two more to look forward to but rats! no idea so far of when they will be published) and picks up the story two decades after the ill-fated (I think we can safely use that phrase) Ishiguro disappeared.

We are onboard the Lara with Mira (short for Mirakel as he was an unexpected second baby) who is the mastermind behind the expedition along with his older twin Tomas. The latter is on the ground playing an active part from a distance as an international crew heads off to investigate the Anomaly and find out what went wrong with the Ishiguro and what happened to its crew.

Of course we know what happened and can anticipate that things will probably not end well. And we are quite correct in that assumption.

Why did I want to read it?

If you read my review of the first book then you will know that there was no way I wasn’t going pick this up. Will there be answers or more of the same?

What did I think of it?

In some ways this is very similar to The Explorer, in that we have first person narrative, a crew with issues, the claustrophobia of being in space and a sense of the unknown. But that is a strength rather than a weakness; the characters of Mira and Cormac are sufficiently different to keep your attention and the central mystery of what the Anomaly is and how it “works” is to me at least fascinating. Paranoia is much more evident with this bunch than the crew of the Ishiguro and there is death and destruction as you might expect but I won’t go too much into the plot except to say that it both repeats and expands on the themes raised and stuff that happened in its predecessor.

If The Explorer was 2001 then The Echo is 2010 (one of my all-time favourite films, I love it so).

Worth noting that I read this in a single sitting on the same day I finished The Echo, which should tell you something.

Can’t wait for the next in the series, I really want to see how this all plays out. Recommended BUT needs to be read in sequence to maintain its power.