Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this ARC. First off, I am a huge fan of Justin Cronin having devoured the Passage trilogy as soon as each book was released. He has an ability to create a wholly believable dystopian world that are rich with detail and strong characters. I enjoyed this new story that included dystopian and sci fi elements and found some interesting parallels to his previous Passage series. Well written and exciting, I would recommend this book to others!

The Ferryman is a complicated and mysterious tale. Proctor Bennett has a meaningful career as a ferryman, who helps people at the end of their lives board a ferry ride. But on the island of Prospera, the ferry ride is not the end of their lives but actually a chance to begin again. When a monitor blinks that people are at the end of their lives (10% or less), then they are forced to go onto the ferry. Proctor must help the willing, the unwilling, and the in-between. However, as Proctor’s number starts to drop lower and he uncovers grim secrets, when will it be Proctor’s turn to board the ferry?

This was such an interesting and clever book. At first I was reminded of the Truman show, as Proctor has so much of his life managed perfectly for him and yet he starts to notice cracks in the facade. The pacing is excellent and I found it difficult to put it down! There are layers upon layers to the mystery that slowly unravels, which I loved. Cronin’s writing is hypnotic and readers will be guessing what is truly going on right up until the very end. The Ferryman is a story about the power of family, the perils of global warming, and the nature of humanity. I would definitely recommend sci-fi fans check out this book! Readers who enjoy Blake Crouch, Gillian McAllister, and Emily St. John Mandel should check out The Ferryman.

Thank you so much to Justin Cronin, Ballantine Books, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, Storygraph, and Barnes & Noble etc

Proctor Bennett lives on the utopian archipelago called Prospera. The citizens of Prospera never die. They lead comfortable lives and when their time is done they are ferried across to the Nursery where they are regenerated or reborn. The memories of their past life are wiped out and they are reintroduced into Prospera literally sixteen again. Proctor Bennet works as one such ferryman, facilitating people's passage out of Prospera. However things are not as they seem and sinister forces are at play. You are in for a roller coaster ride as you read on. If you are a fan of dystopian fiction, alternate worlds and Blake Crouch's dark matter then this book is for you. It starts off slow has multitudes of characters and at times you may be a bit confused on what's going on but it all neatly comes together in the end. And that is the magic of Justin Cronin. Read this in 2 days straight and totally recommend.
Thank you NetGalley, Random House Publishing and Justin Cronin for the ARC.

I tried reading Justin Cronin's older trilogy, The Passage, but I just could never get invested enough in the storyline to ever read more than a quarter of it. I thought the writing was verbose, clunky, winded and the beginning was far too much set up to hook me. Now I had a completely different reaction to The Ferryman.

Now it's hard for me to say too much without giving too much away, as it's one of those books that is better to go in blind, so I will just say this. The Ferryman opened with a bang and had my mind spinning almost immediately, there was so much action and complex storyline but it managed to pull it off without feeling convoluted.

Proctor is a "Ferryman,' meaning his job requires him to ferry people to and fro Nursery island. But this isn't any normal ferrying and ferryman, as things go off the rails very quickly and it will make your head spin, It's one of those types of books where you have no real idea what's going on for a very long while but you have an inkling and you're enjoying the crazy ride even as you're not sure what you're reading or what direction things are going. I personally like to be surprised in my books, if I know how things will end I consider that a failure, but Ferryman sure as hell wasn't that. The heart of the story is actually a dystopia, but it's actually a very new and interesting take on a Dystopian world without falling into the typical dystopian tropes. This was a very very strong 4 star read for me but not quite at the 5 star mark.

Anyone who was enthralled with Justin Cronin's earlier THE PASSAGE trilogy is probably, like me, eagerly awaiting his latest release, THE FERRYMAN, so I was thrilled to get my hands on an ARC. Set on the utopian island of Prospera, this novel focuses on Proctor, a ferryman whose task it is to escort citizens whose lives are coming to a close to the awaiting ferry. From there, the residents of Prospera are sent to the Nursery where they are, in a sense, reborn and sent back to the island. But, as any sci-fi thriller reader expects, something seems not quite right with this process or the world, and soon, Proctor finds himself trying to unravel what's happening.

As a writer, one of the parts I love about Cronin's work is his way of what seems like poking fun at the "rules" of writing. If you've ever been in a creative writing classroom, you've probably been told at some point not to write "genre" fiction. His trilogy, filled with vampires, felt like a challenge to that rule. The Ferryman, meanwhile, breaks one of the most common "rules" in a major way. I can't exactly say which one here since I don't want to spoil his work, but it's fun to watch him pull it off.

I don't love this book as much as his trilogy (though I confess, I still need to read the 3rd), but this was filled with the kind of action and plot twists that make me think that if it hasn't been optioned for film rights yet, it will be soon. It's got a cinematic quality to it.

Thank you to Ballantine and NetGalley for sending me this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

The Ferryman takes place on Prospera, an archipelago whose citizens never truly die. We follow Proctor Bennett, a ferryman for the Department of Social Contracts, whose role is to shepherd people through their retirement.

This book really came out of left field for me in the best way. It was twisty and interesting, with characters I couldn't help but get invested in, even when initially I thought I wouldn't like them at all. The concept was right up my alley, just the right mix of sci fi and dystopia, and even though this book was almost 600 pages, I honestly could've read 200 more pages without batting an eye. Honestly the best surprise this year. I'm not sure there's much that will top it for me. Justin Cronin is a fantastic writer and a fantastic storyteller, and The Ferryman has me wanting to pick up his backlist ASAP.

3.5 rounded up!

The plot in this genuinely surprised me more than once. So much happened! I really liked the last ~30% (significantly more than some of the beginning and middle).

There were some aspects I wasn’t a huge fan of - like some of the dialogue. The pacing also felt a little off and some storylines didn’t feel complete. I also don’t know how I feel about the characters. Some of them were… very flat.

A lot of the things that grated on me in the beginning were relevant to the story later on, so I think I’d need to reread to give a more accurate rating.

The plot was compelling and the mystery kept me interested throughout. I liked the sci-fi aspects of this a lot!

This story is a wild mix of dystopian and science fiction. The main character, Proctor, is an enigma to unravel as you read. The story is told from the voice of several characters. They are working on figuring out the world they live in. The goal is to figure out what’s real and what isn’t. The author does a fantastic job of keeping the reader guessing at every turn. It is an exciting and interesting read to the end.

Storytelling as on Justin Cronin can manage. Every time you think you know what is going on, you discover you don't and for that reason, I will probably read this book again! This would be a great movie!

The Ferryman is a story about a seemingly utopian society on the idyllic island of Prospera. Citizens can focus all their time on the "higher" pursuits of art, philosophy, and leisure. Some citizens start to feel a darkly insidious side to their privileged lives. But that is all it is, just a vague feeling slightly out of their grasp to fully understand. The search for answers takes them on an adventure to find the truth. They surely have no idea what they will learn about their world and themselves.

Bullet Point Review:

I loved the first half of the story, which focused on a few Prosperan citizens living lives that they could dream of until some start to see glimpses of their society that seem to be not quite right. Watching them find clues on their way to discovering what is real and what is not is a compelling mystery.
Because I enjoyed the story's development, the sharp transition to the second half made me question everything that happened in the first half in a pretty jarring manner.
I always enjoy a good versus evil storyline. This story was exactly that until it wasn't.
The development of the story's hero, Proctor Bennett, is very engaging. I learned about Proctor just as he learned about himself and the mysteries of Prospera. The supporting "good" characters were likable and easy to root for, while the "bad" characters had all the traits you love to hate. The major transition in the story made me, and the characters themselves, question what was true.
The story is told through multiple points of view, but the primary narrator is Proctor. We get to experience glimpses of the thoughts and feelings of all the major characters, but this is mainly Proctor's world.
The pace is meandering in the story's first half but in a good way. It explores the main character's discovery of who they are and how they perceive their place in the world.
The setting in the first half is on the beautiful island of Prospera. The weather is always warm and sunny, and everyone has what they desire. It is like a dream. Yet, describing the second half is complicated and would be filled with spoilers, so I won't do that.
Read if you like a mind-bending experience that makes you question what you thought was true and what people might do when confronting challenges that strain the limits of our minds to cope with the complex realities of existence.
The story has me swirling in a mix of The Matrix, The Truman Show, 1984, Inception, and The Time Machine.

This was definitely one of those books that kept me guessing the whole way through and gave me an excellent Aha! moment. It took a little while to immerse myself in the world but once I did, I was hooked. Slow to start and then kept up a good pace until the end.

This is a fascinating treatise on the human condition. What we believe to be true versus what actually is true.
What we believe to be fact versus what is. This story has quite a few twists and turns that always keep you wondering how it's all going to end.
I was surprised but not, in any way disappointed.
I was given this ARC by netgalley for an honest review.

The Ferryman is a gripping sci-fi action thriller. While I thought the start was a bit slow as I was establishing where the world-building was taking me, it didn’t last long before I was sucked into the storyline, trying to place which characters were the good guys and who the real bad guys were. 

This is a book that I went into completely blind. By that I mean I didn’t read the blurb prior to starting this novel and based my request purely on how much I loved Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy. And I have NO regrets. There are no vampires or any supernatural creatures in this story, instead the monsters are purely of the human sort. 

Once I got into the story, I couldn’t put this book down. The action was nonstop as Proctor ran toward the truth, stumbling a few times on the way. I couldn’t wait to understand everyone’s role in his and his friends’ quest to discover the truth about what was really taking place in their world. 

The twists and turns kept me guessing. Just when I thought I had things figured out, BOOM, that was not the case. When all was revealed, it didn’t play out the way I thought it was going to. I love the unpredictable directions this book took while staying a familiar path.

I found the ending to be very satisfying and cannot wait to read the next book Justin Cronin writes. 

*I received a free copy from the publisher for an honest review.

Prospera appears to be a utopian society where people do not die. When it’s time for their life to end, they are sent on the ferry to the nursery. Once there, their memories are wiped clean so that they can start life anew. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately for them, the truth is not what it seems.

Proctor Bennett is our main character, and he is also a ferryman in charge of escorting people to the nursery. Early in the book he is tasked with escorting his father. Things don’t go as planned, which makes Proctor start questioning their way of life.

That is the basic premise of the book, but it takes an expected turn. Unfortunately for me, I guessed the big reveal in chapter two when a certain word started to repeat. One of my favorite books from last year had the exact same reveal. I still thoroughly enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it to anyone who thinks the premise sounds intriguing.

I don’t want to spoil anything but I will be thinking about this book and the ending for a while. I was intimidated by the size but it flies by and is an amazing, wild and twisty ride.

Wow this was a long book! I was drawn in to the premise of this story, and it really did not disappoint. An interesting idea that I am happy I explored! It took me a long time to read this book, with some breaks on and off when things got a slow, but overall this was a great book. I will definitely be recommending it to my sci-fi/fantasy loving friends.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

So, this book. This big, sprawling, mess of a book. Not mess in a bad way. It's a good mess. But it's chock full of stuff. At various times I thought of Logan's Run, The Island, The Prisoner, The Matrix, and some of the movies of Christopher Nolan. Justin Cronin certainly likes to draw inspiration from popular culture and turn those inspirations into books that stretch your imagination.

At the start of the book the reader meets Proctor, who is the titular Ferryman. He helps citizens of Prospera transition from their lives of luxury to their next iteration. Proctor has some unusual things happen around him and is thrust into a story with shifting factions, secrets, and a lot of weird stuff.

I honestly think the less you know about this book going in the better. It's a good book. It's well written. There are some strong running themes. And there are moments where you just don't quite know what's going on. It was a good read and had a very distinctive feel.

I received an ARC through "NetGalley" and I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

This is a story which tells of a tale of interactions between those who are select and those who are not. The main character is Procter who job is a Ferryman which is someone who transport people who fall below a centain reading on their monitor. His job is to deliver these individuals to a ferry where they will then be transpoted to a place identified as "The Nursey" this place is where these individuals are reborn to a much younger self. The last delivery that Proctor made was his guardian father and it did not go well. It went so bad that Proctor was fired from his job.

The story eventually has Proctor working the people at the Annex, the ones that are oppressed. A conflagration happens between the favored and those that aren't. It brings into play a scenario where Proctor becomes a leader.

To discover why Proctor was fired, who the leaders of the oppressed were and how they played a role3. Discover what event the individuals that were leads in the story were in the end and what you ultimately discover as the book finishes.

If you science fiction/fantasy then this a story that you should read.

Have you ever begun reading a book and thought to yourself, “something is just not right here”? That’s exactly the thought I had as I began reading the Ferryman and that feeling continued to strengthen until the big secret was revealed. I was gleeful to find that I had almost predicted the twist and continued to read with much delight because the book actually goes on to resolve many of the questions The Big Twist brought up.
The book follows Proctor Bennett from his arrival on a ferry from the Nursery at the age of sixteen to his adult life where he’s risen to the rank of Director, a senior Ferryman. The Ferrymen are those who gather up the individuals who’ve gotten close to the end of their lives and return them to the Nursery where they can be reborn and live life anew. The island of Prospera seems an almost utopian place where people never truly die, but the residents can never pass the Veil and leave to the outside world. All those who have passed the Veil have never been heard from again. Proctor has always enjoyed his job, up until he’s escorting his father to the ferry and the man flees in fear and as Proctor hauls him back, whispers “It’s all Oranios”. This, accompanied by the guilt and trauma he feels from his father’s final journey, gnaws at Proctor until his very life begins to unravel at an alarming speed.
I spent the first half of this book highly intrigued and speculating about where exactly this story was going to end up. Proctor was a successful man until the stressors of his life began to catch up with him and he started looking into the mysterious Oranios. He made some absolutely mad choices and at the half-way mark, I thought he was going completely nuts. If it weren’t for the suspicious amount of surveillance and a woman named Thea tracking him down for unknown purposes, it would have been really convincing that he was just losing his mind. I really liked Proctor and sympathized with his plight and thought the secondary characters introduced, particularly Thea, were great.
Overall, I was very entertained by this and was left feeling vaguely confused but in a good way. This book is weird in a way highly reminiscent of the show 1899 - trust me, if you’ve watched it, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. The writing was evocative and at times philosophical without feeling pretentious, which I loved. I can see myself reading Justin Cronin’s other works at some point, though I admit dystopian books aren’t high on my reading list these days. The Ferryman is unlike any book I’ve read recently and will definitely leave me thinking about it for some time to come. The ending thoroughly wrapped up the plot and was more in depth than I was expecting from this type of surprise conclusion.

This is not my normal genre and that's probably a factor in my rating.

The prologue intrigued me, though, and I thought I wouldn't have any problem with this. But, I was wrong. This is a very science fiction and dystopian based story, and it really has to be something you enjoy. I did finish it, but it took me awhile to read and understand what was going on.

Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for an advanced readers copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.