Hamartia by Raquel RichMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I started to read ‘Hamartia’ my initial reactions were: OK, here comes yet another dystopian novel, and then I thought, Oh no, it’s written in the first person about souls and it involves time travel! None of which I usually like or can believe in. But the plot appeared intriguing so I continued reading - and I was so pleased I did. The author’s ability to build realistic characters and dialogue kept my involvement and curiosity going from start to finish, although I found the abrupt ‘hook’ at the very end irksome. It always feels like a cheat if a reader needs to buy the sequel to get the ‘complete’ story.
The flawed character of the main protagonist, Grace, is so well drawn by Raquel Rich that I felt I knew her. Her feelings, confused thoughts and actions made painful sense and your sympathy can only lie with her. The inner battles she has in maintaining her friendship with Kay and her love for her estranged husband, Marc, came across well to me. Meanwhile, the nightmare of knowing that her son’s life can only be saved by her dubious, possibly homicidal, acts somewhere in a past decade is ever present. If the reader has any empathy at all they will inevitably understand Grace’s pain. The story gallops along at a breakneck speed and has you turning the pages to see what happens next, normally the sign of a well written book.
There were some problems for me in the timeline used for the to and fro of the time travelling. The ‘Metagenesis’ plague threatening all mankind should, logically, have been set much further into the future, whereas the setting of year 2000, for Grace’s and Kay’s adventures, was not accurate. Pagers, phone books and no mobile phones are things of the 1970s and 1980s or even earlier in time. However, putting those criticisms aside, I can still recommend ‘Hamartia’ as a gripping sci-fi tale, well-told by a talented new author.
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