The Endless Vessel
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Average rating3.3
Combining the wonder of The Midnight Library , the inventiveness of Ready Player One, and the artistry of Cloud Atlas, this novel by the bestselling author of The Oracle Year and Anyone explores the way we’re all connected—and what can happen when we lose our capacity for joy. A few years from now, in a world similar to ours, there exists a sort of “depression plague” that people refer to simply as “The Grey.” No one can predict whom it will afflict, or how, but once infected, there’s no coming back. A young Hong Kong based scientist, Lily Barnes, is trying to maintain her inner light in an increasingly dark world. The human race is dwindling, and people fighting to push forward are increasingly rare. One day, Lily comes across something that seems to be addressing her directly, calling to her, asking her to follow a path to whatever lies at its end. Is this the Endless Vessel to happiness? She leaves her life behind and sets out through time and space to find out. From its opening heart-stopping scene in the present day at the Louvre in Paris, through the earthly meetings between Lily and her loved ones past and present, to a shocking and satisfying conclusion in a truly enchanted forest, Charles Soule has channeled history, science and drama to create a story for the ages—a story of hope and love and possibility. This is a novel you will not soon forget.
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I loved Soule's prior books The Oracle Year and Anyone but this one was kind of a mess. The first part creates a very intriguing setup of a mysterious technology that the main character has to find the origins of, and a strange “plague” spreading all over the world called The Grey (reminiscent of books like Blindness). But then we get an abrupt shift to an overly-long flashback in the whole middle section of the book that reads like a completely different novel. It lost all the pacing from the first part and left me fairly bored, not knowing why I care about any of the newly introduced characters. Finally the third part connected the two stories, but introduces so much new stuff so far into the book that it doesn't get to be explored satisfactorily and ends up with the book ending fairly suddenly.
I wish the book had just kept going with the story from the first part the whole way, and been less all over the place. We didn't get to explore any of the characters very much as a result, and didn't really learn much about the Grey at all. Thus it's unclear what the “point” of it all is. I think the novel would have been significantly improved if it were less packed with stuff and took the time to explore some of it in more depth.
It also suffers from plot holes common to books that just introduce “magic technology” that isn't fully thought through. For example, the ship has amazing technology like some kind of Star Trek energy shield, and yet they don't detect a loaded gun + satellite phone on their security scan (something that even the TSA can probably manage). Additionally it's impossible for a satphone to work inside a ship–it needs an external antenna to work if you are inside of a structure. And it also seems unlikely you could properly aim missiles at a moving ship from a one time coordinate given no additional visual targeting.
Really fascinating concept, I just wish the execution was better. I wish the ending had been much more fleshed out and that it felt more active, rather than something the main character stumbled into.
