Genre: Science Fiction, Noir, Near Future, Quantum Many Worlds
Reviewer: Kristi
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About The Book
A near-future high-concept science fiction thriller, told in a noir style and set in the late 21st century, in which much of east London is being abandoned to the rising sea.
For Metropolitan Police detective Lewis Drake it begins when he is murdered. After that, it only gets worse: the case he is assigned involves one of the entangled, those who have learned to live in the many worlds of the quantum multiverse without losing their minds. Lewis despises the entangled and hates the drugs they take to join their alternate selves.
The case expands into a complex web of murder, corruption, conspiracy and espionage with the entangled gang leader Vidmar at its centre. Lewis’s sister Alice knows all the answers but she is lost in the chaos of a multitude of realities. Only if Lewis overcomes his prejudices and takes the black capsule that will open his mind to other lives will he be able to solve the murders, find the elusive Erica, and protect Alice.
The Review
It’s hard to top existing reviews that speak of a writer’s brilliance, engaging ideas and complexity of plot. I’ll do my best.
This story needed to prove itself to me. as its introduction is such a hook: the narrator talking about his own death, and yet this POV isn’t from beyond the grave. In fact, the voice in this is one, which I didn’t realize could be put into words and the multiple threads, is held together concurrently. Our protagonist becomes entangled, meaning that in varying chemical states, he coherently and co-experientially goes through overlapping realities. David Whitmarsh’s introduction of ‘cerasthesia,’ the confusion of this co-existence among those lost amongst the threads, felt like discovering a word I need for my own timeline and lived experience!
Set in a near-ish future in which not only is there mass migration in London due to the rising sea, but on page seventy, his protagonist’s newsfeed includes information about Cascadia and the Christian States of America. I stopped breathing. The prescience of how near we are to this world as it exists for our detective gave me goosebumps. The world of DI Drake is rich in detail, without being heavy. His descriptions are eloquent, elegant, and enviable.
The main characters are also complex and believable. One of the throughlines of each reality is of Drake attempting to liberate his sister. The depth of their shared trauma and circling back to each other through different guises comes to full bloom at the end of the mystery, when whole bouquets across differing timelines stop shifting. There’s a complex mystery, there are multiple realities and variations on themes, solid science, enticingly-near aspirational technologies, and humans being human, and therefore not allowed to have nice things.
I’d been yearning to be able to jump into a fictional place and stay there, mesmerized, in full belief of the world and its rules and being in a place familiar yet eldritch. This book did that for me. I devoured the story in two days, and imagery from it still haunts me. I really enjoyed reading The Measurement Problem, not least as a quantum physics-interested speculative writer myself. I had high hopes for how Whitmarsh would address the philosophical and practical elements of his chemically entangled worldbuild, and I was there for every bit of it.
I’m so grateful to feel so inspired while writing this review. Thanks to Whitmarsh for his ideas and thoughtful narrative.
The Reviewer
About Kristi: Former extensive beta reader and story reviewer on pre-Russian-takeover LJ. I came from Tolkien/HP/Wraeththu/other fandoms to write some m/m original fiction. I’m so glad to be at QRI as an author and I want to be a voice in the community through reading and reviewing. Looking forward to reading other genres of stories and adding my voice so others can have more feedback and commentary.
