From the 2024 Recommended Reading List: The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar
Here’s a highlight from our 2024 Recommended Reading List: The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar, out from CLASH Books.
From the Locus review by Alexandra Pierce, available in the April 2024 issue (excerpted):
The Man Who Saw Seconds is an action thriller that uses an age-old trope – when a man is wronged, his family threatened, how will he respond? – that is genuinely thrilling: the pacing is perfect, and the stakes ratchet up in a horrifying, relentless, and seemingly inevitable progression… I hope this can be genre-spanning, and that it gets the attention it deserves from every awards list, science fiction and not. I hope that it gets discussed far and wide, and that whenever we talk about how science fiction deals with politics, this is brought into the conversation.
Other select reviews:
“A wildly ambitious masterpiece of speculative fiction that fires on all cylinders. With its blend of audacious ideas, blistering action, emotional heft, and sparkling prose, it instantly establishes Alexander Boldizar as a major voice in sci-fi. Highly recommended for readers looking for a thrilling yet cerebral experience that pushes the boundaries of the genre and the mind itself. A bold, visionary triumph.”
–Hidden Sci-Fi
“This is a book of cinematic velocity and frequent, dark satiric impact. Think of it as a brilliant exercise in multi genre collage, a mash-up of some of the best elements of the thriller, the novel of ideas, anarchism, philosophy and quantum theory.”
—The Vancouver Sun
“One of the most dazzling and inventive [books] I’ve read in a very long time—a novel I continue to describe as indescribable. Boldizar has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Heller and Stephen King, and that says much of what you can expect when you enter the world of The Man Who Saw Seconds. I’ve now read the book twice, and I can’t decide if it’s a thriller, a farce, a political commentary. I don’t know what it is other than I love it.”
—Jim Fusilli, Writers at Work
“This book has stuck to my ribs in a way I almost can’t explain. I flew through it, but in a way that I didn’t want to. I wanted to savor it. But the action was so good, it made me keep reading much longer in a sitting than I wanted to. And then I was left with all these questions that I’m still grappling with—which is the best kind of fiction.”
—Daniel Ford, Writer’s Bone
“Wickedly smart, outrageously funny, and unsettling in its accuracy. The satire is pointed, and the action is non-stop. Think: Elmore Leonard meets Nabokov, Michael Crichton meets Vonnegut, Carl Hiaasen meets Joseph Heller. And it has what is probably the best gunfight in literary history. But this book is more than a fast-paced satire. It’s a warning for America, for the world, really. And, at its core, it’s a poignant love story. The Man Who Saw Seconds is destined to be a classic and, with it, Boldizar’s place as one of literature’s most important satirical writers is assured.”
—Kevin Winchester, Sunflower Dog
“This is one that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page, The Man Who Saw Seconds explores the nature of time, the brain as a prediction machine, and the tension between the individual and the systems we create. Boldizar provides us with the thinking man’s John Wick, and it makes us ask ourselves some very difficult questions. All the while you will be thoroughly entertained.”
—The Curious Man Podcast
Don’t forget to vote in the Locus Awards for your favorite titles from 2024 at the Locus Awards Poll & Survey.
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