Authors love to play with structure and a quick check will bring up novelists who fool around with sentence length, numbers of letters, fonts, and other stuff that we non-writers can't imagine anyone imagining. Here Mr. Doubinsky, who teaches literature and so does imagine these things, writes a novel as a series of single-paragraph chapters. Not entirely, he doesn't force himself into it, but most of the chapters are a single paragraph, the others are short.

"Missing Signal" is the story of a spy in a 1984ish not too distant future. There may be aliens among us and we need spies to catch them. Paranoia runs deep and the structure helps it build.

A year ago I gave "Song of Synth" 3 stars because I thought the end was squishy. This book is tighter (as it must be with the forced structure) and more coherent, to the extent that paranoia can be coherent. Nevertheless, I think the reviews in Amazon's "Editorial Reviews" are exaggerated. This book is a solid 3.5 stars. You will like it but you won't send copies to your friends.

I received a review copy of "Missing Signal" by Seb Doubinsky (Meercat) through LibraryThing.com.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3K69NB8LK5QEQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_tt... ( )

I started this book with some trepidation because science fiction is not usually a genre I read. But, when I started reading it, I realized it's a compelling read and could easily identify with the characters and lives.
The books is divided into short chapters and detail the lives of Agent Terrence Kovaks and his work as a counter-intelligence agent. He has many aliases and mainly debunks UFO stories by propagating fake news about them. Once day, he attends a conference and meets a skeptical attendee, Thomas. Thomas gets in touch with Kovaks and brings a beautiful woman, Vita, with him at the meeting.
Vita tells Kovak that she is an alien and has come for help. Does Kovaks trust her? Does he believe in what she is saying? Or is is all part of a test? What is fake and what is real, and where do we learn to accept our loneliness and reach out, form the crux of this concise, yet expressive story.
I'm looking forward to reading the other books in the series now!

Jona

[Disclaimer: I received an Advance Review Copy] This novel is set up in a possible future world where real and fake news fiercely compete: the main character is indeed a counterinformation agent. The idea is developed well, only a bit hurried at the end, which was not obvious at all given the theme. What I did not like was the "stream of consciousness" bits: most chapters were just a few lines long and I did not manage to get an overall idea of the relation of these parts with the main plot. It could be just me, however. ( )

Skillful, enjoyable writing, a surreal atmosphere, and an intriguing story. Yet it ends too abruptly without much resolution. This is really a short story posing as a novel. It's delightful, but the end felt strangled, as if this book could easily have been extended to a novel and instead, in the interest of leaving a "mystery" for the reader, is simple cut short with too few answers.

Missing Signal takes place in some slightly-off alternate reality. It's not too far off, perhaps slightly futuristic, but the world has changed from the current state. The main character, Terrance Kovacs, is an espionage counter-intellience agent (posting subversive propaganda--"fake news" indeed) for a country called New Petersburg that doesn't particularly seem Russian. Doubinsky leaves a lot for the reader to fill in. Terrance's job essentially is to disguise government weapons testing as UFO phenomenon, so he embeds himself in the UFO conspiracy movement, and when there is something the government wants hidden, he creates a UFO story that slightly changes the facts enough to subvert the truth.

The following is not a spoiler--it's in the book description--Terrance is approached by individuals who claim to be actual aliens disguised in human bodies. And from there, things start to get weirder and weirder, with Terrance unsure who he can trust, and whether he is being lied to by his department or by a foreign power.

Doubinsky's writing is a pleasure, and he crafts a wonderfully strange atmosphere. The real issue is just how abruptly this ends, leaving me disappointed. Still. Even with the disappointment, I think it is worthy of four stars. I'd like to check out his other books.​

Note: I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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I received an ARC of Seb Doubinsky’s "Missing Signal" from Meerkat Press; I had never read him before and had no idea what to expect. It turns out that this is the latest in a cycle of “City State” novels set in a dystopian near-future world, possibly modeled on Europe. Terrence is a master spy in this world, with some 50+ identities and a job involving…. well, hard to say what it involves, but he’s very good at it. Until, that is, he is contacted by a mysterious and beautiful alien, who has a plan to save the planet from being taken over by an evil Empire, said plan involving the highly controversial drug Synth, which may (or may not) allow humans to see the world as it really is…. Or something like that. This is a very short novel with very short chapters (sometimes only one paragraph) and a very quick read, although I have to say that I am not entirely certain of the plot other than to say it’s quite wild. I believe the author is also a poet, and this is a very poetic book, not to mention being really zany at times. It will be published in August 2018, and I hope readers will have the chance to discover this writer as "Missing Signal" is a lot of fun; recommended. ( )