Another of Crouch’s many strengths is his understanding of character. His books are marvelous puzzle boxes, stories wrapped in stories that challenge the reader without ever demanding more than they can give. One of the things that’s so much fun about Crouch’s work in general – and Recursion in particular – is the degree of difficulty with regards to narrative complexity.

Juggling multiple timelines is tricky business, but even as the stories cross and uncross, with branches begetting branches begetting branches, the thread is never lost. There’s a density to the narrative that could easily prove too complex, but Crouch has such a delicate touch that even as we bounce from perspective to perspective and time to time, there’s never the slightest issue. science fiction at its apex, combining sophisticated concepts with sharp plotting and interesting characters. a compelling thriller built on big ideas – typical of Crouch’s thought-provoking sci-fi sensibility. It has a thrumming pulse that moves beyond big ideas and into their effects on a larger, more complex world.

And even though some of his relationships come with a whiff of plot contrivance, he has always been rare among that cadre of speculative fiction writers who traffic in big, near-future ideas in that his characters, on an individual basis, come off as actual humans rather than robots programmed to spout off dialogue. He couches the occasional (necessary, sometimes fascinating) infodump in character and tension most of the time, only rarely resorting to flashbackery or moody staring-off-into-the-rain soliloquy. he juggles the multiple narrators and timelines with a confident economy. A big one and a clever one with some weird modern resonance. Because what Crouch has made here is a puzzle box time-travel story, all based on memory and death.

The recursion book