The Many by Sylvain Neuvel

 

I remember picking up Sylvain Neuvel’s first book Sleeping Giants, from the library when it came out. The format was interesting (it was practically an epistolary novel) and I love giant robots, so I enjoyed it quite a bit, but as the series went on, it felt staler and I enjoyed the conclusion less than I enjoyed the initial mysteries. I never ended picking up his second trilogy, but I was intrigued enough by the concept of his new standalone novel The Many to request it on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

(By the way, I despise the title. No one will pick this book up based on the title alone). 

This book is an interesting twist on the zombie pandemic - a tick bite makes a woman bite people and who she bites she mind merges with. Whoever they bite merge minds with them ending in a Borg- like collective consciousness. 

I really liked some things about this book - the idea that people with merged minds would be obsessed with sex because they were sharing orgasms makes perfect sense, and the autistic police officer character was very well handled. But it is clear that this author doesn’t know any Jewish people in real life - his Jewish doctor character is full of unpleasant stereotypes and she also refers to the house of worship as a “church” which is laughably wrong as well as offensive. 

But problems aside, this book was a real page turner - I couldn’t put it down even when I should’ve been reading something else. It’ll be an excellent beach read or airport book (in the best possible ways).