Title: The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man
Author: Dave Hutchinson
Publisher: Solaris
Publication Date: 3 September 2019
Pages: 212
Format: eBook - EPUB
Genre: Fantasy
Source: ARC via NetGalley
When Alex Dolan is hired by multibillionaire Stanislaw Clayton to write a book about the Sioux Crossing Supercollider, it seems like a dream job.
Then something goes wrong at the site. Very wrong.
After the incident, Dolan finds himself changed, and the only one who can stop the disaster from destroying us all.
The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man is a difficult book to classify and to review. The cover and blurb strongly indicate a superhero-type story, which is what attracted me to the work. However, the first 75% of the book is essentially a slow, tedious drama/mystery story. Then, without warning, the story does a complete flip and turns into something else entirely, dropping a number of characters and unresolved plot points and introducing others. The ending then also feels unresolved in the way it is left. There were bits towards the end of the book that I enjoyed, but I would have liked to have seen those introduced much earlier, because the snail-pace of the first 75% had already lost most of my interest and attention by that point. There is a spark of something in the premise, and I think it would have had potential if not for the pacing issues and the general disjointedness. I'm giving this 2.5 stars that I will round up to a three. There were some interesting moments, but overall the book's structure was too flawed for me to truly enjoy the tale.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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