The Passengers

2019

Ratings64

Average rating3.9

You’re riding in your self-driving car when suddenly the doors lock, the route changes and you have lost all control. Then, a mysterious voice tells you, “You are going to die.” Just as self-driving cars become the trusted, safer norm, eight people find themselves in this terrifying situation, including a faded TV star, a pregnant young woman, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an undocumented immigrant, a husband and wife, and a suicidal man. From cameras hidden in their cars, their panic is broadcast to millions of people around the world. But the public will show their true colors when they are asked, "Which of these people should we save?...And who should we kill first?"

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Remy Sharp

Certainly a page turner and an easy read. Interesting concepts on near-future issues, but I was left feeling a bit...unchallenged.

The story, sort of, revolves around Libby who is a juror on a panel that decides who is responsible in autonomous car collisions. These inquests have always been closed-doors and utterly opaque, and nearly always lays the fault on the human, so Libby gives us an inside view of what's going on.

There's a “Hacker” who takes control of a number of cars and states that each Passenger will die in two hours time. It's then put to the jurors in the inquest to decide (along with a vote from the public - ala dystopian x-factor) as to which single individual will survive.

Jack Larsson is an MP on the panel of jurors. He's horrid. I got the impression he was a Farage type character, disgustingly sexist, racist, self centred, the works. The author does a great job of keeping Larsson on character - as much as it was hard to read this character.

What I had trouble with was how the Hacker had unprecedented control over not only every single car in the UK, but also what seemed like hundred of cameras inside the inquest. The hacker could turn off the audio from the passengers and somehow also kill their network reception on their phones (okay, maybe...) but why the passengers didn't resort to writing on a bit of paper to communicate...it seemed like (to me at least) an obvious tool to use.

The hijacking story ends around 80% in the book which left me kind of confused as to what was coming next. The last of the book is split in half between 3 months later where Libby is the voice for an activist group and the 2 years later when (another) inquest into Jack Larsson's involvement.

The end felt pretty jarring whilst also trying to clean up all the loose ends and (almost) quickly making sure all the baddies have their comeuppance (though in “reality” the real baddies get away scott free...).

I think it makes a good holiday read, but not so well suited to my desire to read a clever dystopian view on near-future technology.