Review | Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell

Good science fiction does two things well: first, it blows your mind. And second, it’s less about the science than it is about the story, about the characters, and the conflict. In other words, it’s good literature that just happens to have a scientific element…even if loosely.

Sean Ferrell’s Man in the Empty Suit accomplishes both of these and accomplishes them well. The plot starts no earlier than necessary, wastes no time with excess details (including the main character’s name), and plows on through to an ending which both answers, and opens, questions in the same breath.

As a work of science fiction, Man in the Empty Suit takes the route of ignoring how time travel works and focuses instead on the consequences of it. The result is a character study that is almost as interesting as the problem the character encounters: how does he solve his own death with the help of no more than clues and hints by a bunch of paranoid versions of his future self?

It’s intriguing, and well executed, to boot. I have two reasons I don’t like the book more, the first character related and the second more due to pacing. First, I found it difficult to sympathize with the protagonist, someone I can’t quite call selfish, but neither is he admirable.

The character of the time traveler aside, the book’s pacing lulls in the middle, and picks up again to a breakneck pace at the end, more than compensating for the lull. In retrospect, the slower pacing in the middle makes sense, but as I read I felt like it dragged.

Still, it’s worth the read. A thank you and a hat tip to Amanda Nelson, over at Dead White Guys, who says about Man in the Empty Suit to “Buy, you fools!”

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Overall Rating:  

Parent’s guide: Not really a book for teens or children.

• Sex: Yes, but not explicit.
• Violence: One murder, some blows.
• Language: Occasional cussing.

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Attack of the Books! is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, a month long quest to post every day. Each day should match a letter of the alphabet. Today is the letter M (as in Man in the Empty Suit).