Thursday

by Jake Kerr

NO ONE CAN BE TRUSTED, AND NOTHING IS REALEnder's Game meets The Matrix in this mind-bending debut science fiction novel from Nebula-Award nominee Jake Kerr. In a near future of decaying cities and gray skies everyone has escaped to the wondrous life of virtual reality. Including the criminals.And the most dangerous criminal in the world is Sunday, the leader of the terrorist group the Order of Days, whose sole mission is to destroy the false life of virtual reality and return people to the land of reality.Stumbling upon Saturday, a key member of the Order of Days, while on a simple mission, young FBI agent Gabby Kane brashly tries to single-handedly capture her, only to botch the mission. Gabby not only allows Saturday to escape, but she seriously injures her own neural connection to virtual reality in the process. With her career in jeopardy, Gabby agrees to a nearly impossible Infiltrate the Order of Days as Thursday and kill the mysterious Sunday.Deep undercover and getting closer to uncovering the Order of Days, Gabby finds herself in increasing danger and without allies. But do enemies and allies even eixst when no one can be trusted and nothing is real?Thursday is the long awaited debut science fiction novel by multiple-award nominated author Jake Kerr.Starting with an undercover mission in virtual reality gone wrong and never taking its foot off the gas, Thursday is the kind of book where chapters don't exist because you can't stop yourself moving from the end of one to the beginning of the next.

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 5, 2017

About the author

After fifteen years as a music industry journalist Jake Kerr's first published story, "The Old Equations," was nominated for the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America and was shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon and StorySouth Million Writers awards. His stories have subsequently been published in magazines across the world, broadcast in multiple podcasts, and been published in multiple anthologies and year's best collections.

A graduate of Kenyon College, Kerr studied fiction under Ursula K. Le Guin and Peruvian playwright Alonso Alegria. He lives in Dallas, Texas, with his family and a menagerie of pets.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was a really interesting take on "The Man Who Was Thursday", posing a lot of interesting questions on the nature of the self and of reality but never really providing any answers, leaving each character (and the reader) to puzzle it out for themselves. It was a bit disappointing though that race is never really mentioned at all, despite one of the POV characters being a Black woman. Like, more thought is given to the unique experiences of an AI than to her experiences as a Black woman in New York.

If anyone who follows me is reading this, I KNOW Lucian's voice is utterly insufferable, it's intentional and eventually the POV will switch to another character who is not terrible.

[Jamie Sidey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got so fed up with the juvenile characters that I stopped

[Bryce Wilson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Take a Poochiefied version of The Man Who Was Thursday (This is a Chesterton that gets Bizzay!) that ignores all that boring spiritual stuff.

Just imagine how bad you think this book is going to be.

Then make it oh so much worse.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should note that I am not a science fiction fan and that may color my rating of this novel. I am, however, a big fan of Jake Kerr's short stories and this enjoyable book is worth reading. Taking place mostly in a virtual reality, Jake Kerr avoids a lot of the easy clichés and even pokes fun at some of the comparisons readers may make to similar books and movies. This keeps the story interesting and the reader guessing at what will happen. To say more would require spoilers I don't want to add. I think you almost everyone will enjoy the novel.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Utterly unsatisfactory. I didn't even care enough to give it a 1-star rating. At least it was short.