I have such a book hangover now that I’ve finished this amazing dystopian novel by Justin Cronin! This is the type of longish story I would love as an audiobook, but with this one, I wanted to savor every concept, every twist and turn.

This is the first book I’ve read by Justin Cronin and now I can’t wait to read his previous novels. Even if you don’t think you like sci-fi, this story could make you a convert.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballentine for this complimentary ARC. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book!

I was very impressed by this book. It felt like a mash up of tj klune and Blake crouch as far as writing style.

I am not sure if I should classify this as thrilled, sci fi, or dystopian. Regardless it was a story unlike anything I’ve read before. I think you should read this if you enjoy slow paced, action packed, emotional stories.

At times the book was complex but it didn’t take away from the overall story.

Author Justin Cronin, will always be one of my favorite authors. His legendary series starting with The Passage, is a masterpiece. To be chosen to receive this ARC for The Ferryman, made my year! I felt humbled to be able to read and give my honest review. The Ferryman did NOT disappoint. The prologue opens up with a horrific scene, a blood soaked woman gives up on life itself. I was instantly drawn in, and curled up for a night of no sleep - as I devoured this book. To say “this book engulfed me” is putting it lightly. In this dystopian world, the Ferryman is Proctor Bennett, who helps people “retire”, with the aid of implanted body monitors. When he starts to question his purpose, he isn’t the only one to do so in this new society. What happens throughout the book is met with bloodshed, terror, mystery, battles, revolution and ultimately - horrible truths.

If you open yourself up to this story, you will NOT be disappointed. You will come to love Cronin more than ever, and again, carry pieces of his latest story, within your soul.

So grateful to Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley, for the chance to read and review this arc. All opinions are 100% my own.

I received a digital ARC of this novel from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine through NetGalley.

Do not let the length of this novel intimidate you. It is a beautiful, thought-provoking story that will stay in my mind. The characters were wel developed, and I felt like I knew them.

The Ferryman is a smart sci-fi dystopian novel. Proctor Bennet is a ferryman. He takes people who live in Prospera an island where everything is perfect to the Nursery when they have worn down and need to be refreshed. He enjoys his job until he has to take his father to the Nursery. What follows after is twist after twist that will have your mind reeling until the end. Thank you for my ARC #NetGalley.

I really wanted to like this book. I have read other books by Justin Cronin and loved them, but not so much on this one. There is so much going on, I felt overwhelmed. The first part of the book was good, but as it went on, I lost interest. there was so much potential but it just went flat. Once I hit the big plot twist, meh. I guess I expected more - better writing based on prior novels.

I don’t normally read science fiction, but the premise of this book caught my eye. A dystopian society is living free of the death and hazards occurring in the rest of the world. Everything is just peachy for the upper class, but a slow rumbling is building in the lower class. Proctor, whose job is to escort individuals to the ferry to be “reborn”, is able to dream, which should be impossible in his society. This ability starts a crack in what he believes is his world.
I love the description of people and events in the dystopian society. At times near the end of the book, I lost focus; I think the depth of imagination of the author is more fine-tuned, and I simply couldn’t keep up with his train of thought. Similar to “The Matrix”, there are numerous layers.
Thanks to Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The publishing date is May 2, 2023.

Wow! This book was a wild ride. Every time I thought I had the story figured out, it took a turn. Particularly the last third of the book. What was dream and what was reality? Quite a fun piece of science fiction. Thoroughly enjoyable and I couldn’t put it down. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read and review an advance copy of this book.

The Ferryman
by Justin Cronin
Science Fiction Dystopia
NetGalley ARC

Proctor Bennett is a Ferryman, and with that job, he brings the people to the ferry so they can 'retire' when the monitor on their forearms falls under ten percent. The ferry ride takes them to the Nursery, where they are reborn, their bodies brand new, their memories of their past life gone, though sometimes deja vu happens, and unknowingly they find themselves attracted to the same people from their past lives.

But Proctor is dreaming and has for all of this life, something that is not supposed to be possible, and after he takes the man who was his father to the ferry, Proctor's monitor starts to drop and the people around him begin to act suspiciously. But it is them or him?


I can't go too deep into this story or I'll spoil it, but I can say I did not like it. It was too slow. It rambled on as it slowly built up to the 'point of the story', which was one of my guesses I had within the first half of the book.

Maybe if more life was brought into the world and characters, and the 'haves and have nots' weren't so stereotypical, everything wouldn't have felt so flat, but if the flatness was the author's intention, then the book should be a lot shorter. There were too many pages of blah, blah, blah, and I started to skim the book. (Should've DNF it.) Plus the chapters where it wasn't from Proctor's point of view seemed a little pointless.

Some people will love this, but I did not. It was an interesting idea, but for me, it moved too slowly and the characters were too boring.

1 Star

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin was received directly from the publisher and I chose to review it. I have read this author in the past and found while he has a vivid imagination, his books are way to long for my liking. This book was the same. This book is long and takes place over a long period of time (read: decades). The first half is a slow burn that I had to re-reads parts of to keep track of what was going on, as there was so much going on and there was a lot of dialogue with slow action taking place. If you, or someone you buy gifts for is a Cronin fan, or enjoy long intricate stories, give this book a read.

3 Stars.

The Ferryman is a utopian/dystopian novel, not a genre I ordinarily pursue. This copy was gifted to me by the publisher to read and review in advance of its publication. It captured my attention, but it took me two tries to begin to understand what is happening.

The action of the story begins in the nation of Prospera, a three island world, which interacts with no other parts of the world. On Prospera, people arrive looking like 16 year olds but as unformed as babies. Couples have applied to adopt them as their wards. They learn quickly and procede with what might be called a normal life, going to college, pursuing a career, marrying and eventually perhaps adopting a ward of their own. The process is called iteration and the beginning of it is shrouded on an island called simply The Nursery.

Of course, in the spirit of a true dystopian novel, someone begins to wonder what else there might be on the planet, perhaps even what life might be like were it not so perfect. And the central question, or at least one of them, reveals itself to be why has Proctor’s mother seemingly committed suicide by throwing herself into the ocean, rather than presenting herself for reiteration.

The action changes to The Annex, the place where servant types and menial laborers live. There’s something more to life here than meets the eye. But all is not well in the Annex. The people are treated as poorly as those in the slums of our world. And you can sense there is a revolution fomenting. Residents of the Annex do not iterate. They are born and die. They have nothing to lose.

There’s something wrong with Proctor Bennett, the main character, and the novel takes a turn toward the surreal as it explores what might be happening. Bennett has presented his father to take the ferry for reiteration on the Nursery. But at the last minute his father goes crazy and begins to yell nonsense. A guard tackles him and Proctor tackles the guard. Proctor is later accused of muddying the guard though he was perfectly fine when he left the scene. But let me urge you to read it to the end. The journey along the way takes several twists and turns.

This review is long enough that I think I had better leave the rest for you to discover. I thoroughly enjoyed Cronin’s writing and his imagination. I would read another book by him. This one will give you pause to think and much to think about.

Beautiful utopia Prospera, where citizens live long prosperous lives until they decide to “retire” and be born again with new bodies and memories. A ferry ride to Nursery island is the first step of this incarnation and Proctor Bennett is the ferryman who assists Prosperians through the retirement process.

I knew next to nothing about this book and pretty much based my request on the fact that it was written by Justin Cronin. I loved the Passage series and banking on the fact that this would be another wonderfully immersive story.

I found this to be a slow burn. It took me several chapters to get into it, but going in knowing that it’s a long book (close to 600 pages) I knew I had to be patient. It takes until about 50-66% of the book before I could start to surmise what was going on. The story is well written and the characters are interesting. Proctor is a solid character who develops well during the story. He’s a company man initially but slowly starts to see that there are some shady things happening and we follow that journey as the luster of Prospera starts to wear off.

This will definitely be a win for readers who enjoy dystopian fantasy. It definitely gives some Inception, Matrix, Brave New World vibes. Lots of reality stacking. The major twist is jarring and leads you to question everything you just read. However, I was underwhelmed and I just felt like I didn’t care enough. While I can appreciate the writing and story, I just felt very “meh” about it at the end. It was fine, but not worth a re-read or a strong recommendation.

The Ferryman is a long and intricately plotted narrative which unfolds over multiple decades, but after reading and loving Cronin's Passage trilogy, this felt like a half-formed debut with too much going on. (The first half was also a snooze-fest that took me way too long to read.) I thought that I would love anything Cronin wrote going forward, but now I'm wondering if it's not Cronin specifically but those books in particular.

5⭐️

This book was incredible. I definitely feel a bit mentally exhausted from it but it was such an amazing journey. I can't believe it's been so long since the Passage Series and I'm so happy to have another book from Cronin.

This book is impossible to explain without ruining it or giving too much away so I recommend reading the synopsis for details. It's science fiction dystopian. It's very unique but so smart. I can't wait for its release and see what others say/theorize. It has many many layers and is broken up into unique parts. There are multiple points of view but follows the most part of one person,

It's beautifully written and it will quickly suck you in. There's so many emotions that this book deals with including grief. One con of this book was thr middle was a bit confusing for me and I had to follow closely at the end to figure out what we were experiencing prior. But I never would have guessed the ending of this book and my jaw was on the floor,

I'd highly recommend this to fans of Blake Crouch or other sci fi dystopian. If you also loved The Passage don't let this one pass you by.

Thank you to NetGalley and Randoms house publishing for this advanced reader copy. My review is voluntarily my own.

I will be posting my review to my Instagram page the.floofs.booknook and retail sites close or on publication.

This was a weird book, but I liked it. Proctor’s job is to ferry people to an island paradise of retirement. But all is not well, and then this sci fi fantasy just goes weird, crazy, but in a good way. In the end I’m not really sure what I read, but I think I liked it.

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The Ferryman wasn’t an easy read but it was a satisfying one. By the time, I finished, I was still confused on some things but really enjoyed the parts that came together for me. This sci-di dystopian book is all encompassing and so atmospheric.

If I knew what I just read, I might have loved it. The first quarter was confusing trying to place the environment they lived in and to reread some sections which now make sense. The middle part got pretty exciting, albeit confusing in a SciFi way. Once I got to the point of understanding everything, the last few chapters confounded me.

Use your imagination while you read. For SciFi lovers, definitely go for it. For those who love historical fiction, maybe not.

This review will be posting on the Fanbase Press website closer to the release date.

Prospera seems like a perfect world with its comfortable lifestyles, white collar jobs, and lack of death, at least in the most common sense. Once the monitor implanted in each citizens’s arm fall to a certain level they are gently shepherded to the Nursery by a ferryman to be reset into a childlike state and eventually returned to Prospera as a ward of adult members of the community. However, the Support Staff that take care of the menial jobs on Prospera live ordinary human lives with aging, illness, and suffering, and resentment towards the idyllic Prosperans community is growing rapidly. Whispers of a rebel group known as the Arrivalists spread, and an unsuspecting ferryman called Proctor Bennett will be sucked into the heart of the conspiracy when his father’s retirement doesn’t go as planned.
Justin Cronin has written numerous speculative fiction novels (translated into numerous languages including Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German), but somehow I had never heard of his writing until Ballantine’s PR team reached out via Netgalley since my other reviews on the site indicated I might be the target audience for The Ferryman. The subtle mystery of Prospera sucked me in from the first chapter, and as I teased out the facts, I realized the core of Cronin’s story was an exploration of grief rather than a tale of proletariat versus plebians. Simultaneously The Ferryman leaves the reader with a sense of hope for the future even while the novel’s final pages present a bittersweet fantasy for some of the main characters.
I have a knack for reading books that will be ruined if I reveal too much about the plot, and The Ferryman definitely fits that mold. The magic of learning the truth of Prospera, Proctor Bennett, and the world as you read cannot be understated. Clues to the relationship between Prospera and the Support Staff’s world lightly pepper the plot, and when there are big reveals it’s easy to look back and see the subtle foreshadowing. However, knowing how all the pieces fit together before you start removes some of the joy of this book’s journey. I can only encourage intrigued readers to take the plunge.
At times I found The Ferryman a little dense and deliberately paced, but when I reached the end, I understood. Cronin set the readers up as Prosperans who only know what they’ve been told by the leadership. To discover the truth, we must follow in Proctor’s footsteps and slowly decode the dystopian world we’ve entered, and ultimately I felt it was worth the journey.

4.5 Paintings of Faces in the Waves out of 5

Weird but engaging. I never read The Passage series, so I didn’t really know what to expect from the author, but I was pleased with the quality of the writing. I had actually mostly guessed the twist/explanation for what was going on, but I liked that there were more consequences after the reveal. Satisfying ending. A good read!

I absolutely loved the last chunk of the book. It was riveting and heart-rending and fast paced. The beginning was where it falters because it took SO VERY LONG to get through that I literally forgot entirely about that plot summary I read before starting the book. But that last 60% man, what a ride.