Jon Taylor’s Reviews > The Peripheral > Status Update

A fusion of realities. Interesting that, in this collision, there is uncertainty about ‘reality’ from Flynn, who is uncertain if she is in the future, as she has been told, or just in a game, or VR. How would she know, for sure?

Occurs to me that I’m enjoying the form - short, snappy chapters filled with short snappy paragraphs and sentences. Lots of dialogue so it’s pacy. Reminds me a bit of James Ellroy.

Like the detective angle. Who is Ossian?

This is a proper thriller now. Once you get the rhythms of his prose and begin to understand the tech, things get clearer. Fascinating idea - a conversation with someone from the past but they don’t know you’re from the future.

The imagination and depth of detail in it is boggling - the Lego piece that changed shape for example. And
the murder method. Now I understand that we have 2 narratives, one happening concurrently but 70 years in the future to the other, things are beginning to clear.

Something’s going on. It’s very much a ‘drop you in the middle of it’ narrative. And then I find one of the narratives is happening 70 years ahead of the other. Except in that narrative they can travel back in time… some stuff about alternate reality, a war, celebrity assassins?.. hope I can make sense of it all…