The purple prose, while beautiful, are distracting. It suffers from pacing problems. Not much is happening in terms of plot or moving the narrative forward. The author is clearly knowledgeable in neuroscience and parts were really compelling. However, it was too long and then ended abruptly.

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to the audiobook. I apologize for the delay in sharing my review. You can find my review on my Instagram account @shhi_iamreading. Here’s the link: https://www.instagram.com/shh_iamreading

A little too heavy on science and jargon for me. I gave it a good go but the plot just didn’t grab me. The author’s knowledge is vast though.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and author for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Unfortunately I was unable to download this book before the archive date, so I'm not able to leave a review. I look forward to reading and reviewing books by this author in the future.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Nice and fast paced but the writing and dialogue was a let down for me - it felt very flat and didn’t have a lot of emotion behind it. As a result, I found it hard to connect with the characters and their stories

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book had an amazing plot, but I felt the characters were a bit hard to connect to.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

3.5 stars

First of all, I'd like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to have early access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

Summary:

Kierk, a neuroscience brilliant student, is living on the streets on his car after a heavy fight with the director of the doctorate he had been undertaking. Alone and with personal issues, he receives an invitation to be part of a postdoctoral fellowship, which would allow him to hit two birds with one stone and try to get both courses certified and done, getting his life and fame on the field again. But someone seems to be obsessively attacking every scientist working with him.

This is am adult psychological thriller that keeps you hanging. You need to understand the characters' struggles to survive and to push forward on their studies; the importance of their investigations.

The main topics are neurosciences, conscience in the brain and, especially, neurophilosophy, so this book gets deep in to reflections and different opinions on the topic of consciousness, ethics and how to approach them when investigating. What should be our main hypotheses? Where to stop to make sure we're not damaging our participants or the damage is minimal? When does your investigation become an obsession and forcing you out of reality?

This book is topic driven, which means everything that happens is focused on taking the reader on a ride through the reflections the author wanted to discuss. The plot is logical and, as crazy as it may seem, it is feasible. We also get to know and understand each of the characters, their emotions and the reasons for their behaviour. However, I didn't attach to any of them and did not feel them particularly likeable, but they don't have to be.

Being into the fields of psychology and neurosciences, I understood the discussions that took place throughout the story, but if you know nothing of these, you'd get deeply lost, so I recommend this book if you have at least some idea of what it's being mentioned, given that it goes deep on the topics mentioned.

This book was very interesting and fast-paced, the author held my attention and the plot was very appealing. I would recommend this book to friends.

Interesting, but very long-winded. I had trouble staying focused. The characters are very good though. I’d check out this author again.

It is a very demanding and technical book for a normal reader who just wants something to entertain himself. Too dense for my taste.

I wanted to like this book. I tried to like this book. I marveled at the knowledge base of the author. But in the end, it was too dense with technical verbiage, and not dense enough with the plot. If I had felt that the jargon added to the story enough to necessitate that kind of deluge, I could support it. The balance just wasn't there. The characters weren't developed enough for the reader to invest, and I couldn't find a person to support. In the end, it was a struggle to finish. The information was on point and was interesting to me, but it outweighed the story.

I was very interested in the neuroscientist lead character and found him a compelling guide to the novel. However, it lost me a bit because it felt very jargon-heavy. If I were a scientist I think I would have enjoyed it more, but this one was a little lost on me. I think there's an audience out there for it - it just isn't me!

I would like to extend my gratitude to the author, publisher and NetGalley for sending this advanced reader's copy in return for a fair and honest review.

I did not like this book one bit. I did not like the characters; felt they were very shallow and not very interesting. I did not like the story; it was written in a strange way. More academically written prose for me. I had to read certain parts of it several times to get full understanding. Unfortunately, I just did not like it.

Kierk is a homeless neuroscientist who is given the opportunity of a lifetime when he is offered a prestigious Crick Scholarship at NYU. This involves a lot of research on conciousness as well as testing on animals, much to the dislike of an animal welfare group. However when one of Kierks' colleagues ends up dead, he can't shake the feeling that it wasn't an accident.

This book is alot! It's part neuroscience text book and part murder mystery. I loved the latter but the former was dry and heavy as well as confusing. The other thing that annoyed me was the fact that every chapter began with Kierk showering for the day. I appreciate that he had great hygiene but it became monotonous. However, it may have been purposeful and I just can't see why. I did love the characters though. This would be a good read for those interested in science.

Thank you to @netgalley for gifting me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Revelations sets out on a promising track, with a group of top scholars pulled together to find the origin of consciousness. Our main guide to this world is enigmatic bad boy Kierk, who has already walked away from the field once before in disillusionment, only to be pulled back in out of desperation. He and his coopetition are working together for a year on various projects, but only a few of them will get coveted positions at the end.
Despite this start, the actual explorations of consciousness are few and far between, as other tropes like love stories, murder mysteries, and sabotaging activists contribute some degree of intrigue, and flashbacks to other characters' backstories distract from any plot.
There are some really great scenes, like the much-built-up confrontation between Kierk and his mentor that should have probably had a mirror much earlier in the book, while some things were more enigmatic, like switching to the second person during intimate scenes.
Overall, I would have appreciate much more about the actual theories of consciousness that Kierk alternately wrote off or obsessed over, as well as those of the other scholars. It is truly fascinating how a series of electrical impulses somehow becomes a self, and whether the self was there first as a cause, is the effect, or is somehow both, and what conditions are required for that to form and if it could be replicated. More revelations on that front would have made this a more unique and special book, but it was still thought-provoking and interesting.

I do not understand why this book is still listed for me I send my feedback three years ago. Sending this to remove,

In my time as a reader I have only ever DNF'ed one book. And I strongly considered not finishing this one. I didn't find any of the characters likable and most of the writing was so dense and hard to comprehend. I felt dumb trying to read this. It was work. Kierk was not a character I can related to or would even want to spend any time around. I was initially excited about the thought of there being some large mystery to unravel but it all felt very haphazard and unfinished. It seems to me like the author is trying to show how smart he is. Well mission accomplished, I can tell you are very intelligent but it doesn't make for good or enjoyable reading.

**I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Happy to include this title in the spring Thrills and Chills roundup, the list of notable new crime and mystery titles for Zoomer magazine’s Club Zed book section.

The idea of the novel is very intriguing. It is about brain and consciousness, there is a lot of descriptions about the way brain functions which was quite interesting. But, you get tired of that real quick if there is no movement in the story. That was a big hurdle in getting through the book.