The title of Stuart Turton's new book caught my eye - The Last Murder at the End of the World. I enjoy post apocalyptic fiction and murder mysteries, so this was an easy book to pick up.

I'm always fascinated as to what an author imagines for the 'end of the world'. I liked what Turton has come up with - there's so many directions the plot could take from the opening chapters.

The end of the world is a small island surrounded by a poisonous black fog. Three elders make the decisions for the 121 gentle villagers. And then there's Abi - the artificial intelligence that speaks to everyone through their thoughts. When a body is found, its heralds the beginning of the end...

There's lots more about the island and the inhabitants to discover. Trying to solve a murder is a new situation for the villagers. Normally the elders take care of everything and their word is the final decision. But one villager is determined to get answers for not just the murder, but for the rest of their tiny piece of the world. They have 107 hours to solve the killing.

In addition to some great world building is the characters' growth. Will they find the whodunit? Will changes take place? Will they survive the changes?

Something different for me, but I very much enjoyed it. ( )

I think Turton books are ones that would be fun to return to, as they are quite a bit denser and more layered than your average mystery. This is certainly a genre blend though, with some dystopia, some sci-fi, and then your basic murder investigation. There is a lot of information to take in over the course of the story, many technological surprises that change the flavor of the murder mystery. This isn't a whodunit that you can unravel on your own, as you will have no idea what pieces are even possible until the end. One thing that bugged me about the characters was that I couldn't tell what generation/age they were from the dialog. I would be reading and then suddenly be reminded that this is a child, or this is an adult who is talking about her own adult father, or whatever. It definitely helped to have the AI narrator bringing the threads together, even if it was also unreliable. ( )

Kind of a standout for me for this author. I feel like I always want to like Stuart Turton more than I do; I find his "twisty" books tropey (in a good way) and fun, but I always feel like I see the twists coming so far away! However, this one had pretty well won me over by the end anyway—I enjoyed the actual characters and their interesting interpersonal dynamics quite a bit. ( )

Ambitious dystopian fiction with a complex mystery plot keeps the reader hooked.

At some point in the future, there's an island at the end of the world. Surrounding the land inhabited by 122 villagers and 3 scientists is a thick fog containing insects that destroyed everything within its path and the entire rest of the planet. Daily life on the island is simple and peaceful as the villagers work and sleep, performing any tasks delegated to them by the scientists whose leader is Neima. Every night they go to sleep promptly at curfew and exist only to provide service and self-sacrifice for their community.

Suddenly things fall apart when one of the scientists is found dead and their murder has caused the barrier holding back the fog to fail. Now on a tight deadline to solve the murder and prevent the fog from killing them all, a brave villager, Emory, who has always questioned everything about life on the island, is delegated to solve the mystery and prevent extinction of the inhabitants. The investigation is hampered by the fact that the security failsafe on the island has done a memory wipe and no one there can remember what they were doing the night before.

Even as the clock ticks and everyone seems to be running amok all over the island trying to figure out who did what to whom, the reader knows that somehow this is all going to be OK because otherwise this would be a really terrible story. The protagonist, Emory, is as courageous as expected and exhibits all the necessary smarts and talent to figure things out of course. So, in essence, this is a common enough plot with archetypes except that Emory and the villagers are different in a fundamental way to most heroes.

The reason this novel resonated with me is that it was quite a puzzle full of interesting twists and turns that kept me guessing. The island was full of technology that made the place and the events unique. The writing was excellent even though the big picture was quite complicated, and I had to reread some of it just to make sure I was following. The setting and the description of the island layout and buildings, etc. also made for a great backdrop to the story line. I kept thinking this would make a great movie.

I listened to the audiobook while also reading along with the e-book ARC provided by the publishers. I did not care for the narrator -- mostly because it was a male voice, and the main characters were primarily female and so it seemed totally out of place for the story. Plus, all the voices of the women sounded the same and done badly. I would think it wouldn't be that hard to get both a male and female narrator for an audio version of a book that would enhance the listening experience. I'm sort of new to the audiobook but I am finding more and more that the lack of dual (or more) voices creates an irritant. I finally put the audio aside and finished without it.

I wasn't sure if I would like this or not, but I totally did. I am looking forward to hearing what others think of it. ( )

When you get to the acknowledgements at the end of this book, you get a sense that this was not an easy story to write and things did not go well during the process and I have to say, that this book is not a patch on his previous books.

Set in the future where a black fog has swallowed up the whole of the world, trapping a few people on an island where it is held back by one person. Life on this island is happy, carefree and everything is in the service of the elders who oversee all, along with Abi a voice that is heard in everyone's head. Plenty of scope here for things to go wrong. And they do.

The book is an attempt, I think, at exploring what we mean by free will and so everyone on the island does not have the luxury of free will, it's just that they also don't know it. It only takes one person to start questioning and then the walls start to crumble. At the heart is the desire for money and how it distorts actions. Step out of line and you are banished or killed (are we talking about Russia here?).

Part of the problem with the book is that I really didn't have a full grasp of what was going on in the first third and then nothing really happened until the last few pages. There were no thoughts as to why some of the characters were free to think but the majority weren't and it wasn't really clear why other people were entombed.

I enjoyed the short chapters - I like a book to roll along but not even the looming deadline for extinction really injected any pace or excitement into the plot. The story flat-lined. ( )