In Perpetuity is a 2018 science fiction novel by Jessica O'Toole. It's a dystopian sci-fi novel that was released in December 2018 and published by Loyal Lyre.
Warring rages across the world. The human race is going extinct. But Sebastian Eastman's obsession is going to save them all. Regen is the home of cryonic reawakening; a living memorial to Sebastian's dead mother. It has the rudimentary technology, the pioneering minds and the perfect plan. There's only one problem. Nobody's ever never been awakened from cryosleep, and nobody knows if the thousands of hearts Sebastian's already stopped will ever warm again. Then death comes for him, and his dreams of completing his mother's work begin to fade. But, after a miraculous recovery, he returns three years later to find his project hijacked. The caretaker CEO and lead psychiatrist won't give him Regen back. A younger and smarter geneticist is out to replace him. And he falling for a woman who despises him. Exposed and vulnerable, his life's work is not all that haunts him. Waking nightmares threaten the lives in those pods, and surfacing memories tear at the fragility of his mind. The discoveries he's made, and is set to make, might just sacrifice humanity as he knows it...but who will bear the cost?
This novel is a science fiction dystopia, as I've already said, and the author did a commendable job keeping those two aspects of the story in balance with one another. The sci-fi elements are more prevalent in the first half of the novel, when the cryosleep is introduced and delved into initially, but they never completely go away. Cryosleep is typically used as a tool is sci-fi, an element in a bigger plot and it was refreshing to see the ideas and ethics around cryogenics be the focus of the novel. The author wrote an excellent dystopian civilization and as it slowly was revealed to the reader, the horrors of the dystopia became more and more apparent. The reader is slowly introduced to how unjust and terrible the world is, and that makes those moments of revelation that much more impactful. There was a great deal of care taken to not just say the world is bad, but to show why it is bad and slowly allow the reader to work out all of the issues in the world.
The plot of this book was interesting for the most part. The novel is a mystery at times, as well as a sci-fi dystopian story. The author made a very deliberate choice in how this story was told, which kept me more invested and continue reading. The author was careful not to give the reader too much information at any one time, which allowed for the resolution of the plot and certain plot twists to come together in an interesting and unexpected way. I did feel like the revelation of one thing was a little too drawn out. By the time it was revealed in the text, I had already worked it out and it didn't have an impact like it should have. For most of the book, the reader is in Sebastian's point-of-view, which truly shapes the story. There's a time jump in the middle of the story, but rather than deal with an unreliable narrator, who hides information, the reader is following an ignorant narrator, who doesn't know what's going on any more than the reader does. I felt like every question I had during the course of reading was answered in some way, so there were no plot threads left hanging.
While I liked the plot for the most part, and the world, the writing in this book was a weak point in my opinion. There are some passages in this book that feel repetitive and could have been removed, combined with other passages or adjusted to move the plot forward, rather than allow it to stagnate. The pacing was also inconsistent. Sometimes, the story moved at a steady pace, but the middle of the book was a real slog and the ending felt incredibly rushed. My biggest complaint with the writing, however, was related to the dialogue. There's no real nuance or complexity to the dialogue. It's very basic, it's very blatant and it's clear which characters are not to be trusted, because of the way they speak. I said earlier that the author was careful not to reveal too much, but that's not entirely true because of the dialogue. It becomes very apparent, after the time jump, that there's some nebulous "thing" that's happened that Sebastian doesn't know about and can't be told about. The issue is that the author keeps referencing it, keeps having characters mention this "thing" in conversation. It's frustrating that this keeps happening, with no additional detail, multiple times before its revealed. It felt a bit like the characters, and the author, saying "I know something you don't know. I know something you don't know" to the reader. The "thing" being kept from Sebastian could've been mentioned once, in dialogue, and it would've had the same impact.
In Perpetuity is a book that I thought was fine. It had an interesting sci-fi dystopian angle that I hadn't seen used in combination before. The plot was mostly good, with a few reveals not really working as well as the author probably hoped. The writing was something I struggled with and it made the story very hard to get through, even though I was invested in seeing how things resolved. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really stand out to me either.
Rating: 2.25 Stars
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