Hourglass: a Book Review
Written by my cousin Elizabeth Means
Hourglass was recently published by my cousin, and I thought I would write a review for the book given that I was allowed to read it a year ago. We are two of 44 cousins, and we both enjoy writing, so when I saw she was writing a book, I asked to read it. I’m saying all this upfront so you know that I have a bias.
I really enjoy science fiction, particularly end of the world type books or technology drastically changing how the world functions. I have read almost all of Arthur C. Clarke’s works, and he quickly became my favorite writer as a teenager. Something about his novels would suck me in, and I wouldn’t be able to put the book down.
When Elizabeth first sent me her book, I was excited to read something she wrote as well as the genre, but my expectations were low. I suspected I would slowly read it over a few weeks as time permitted, and I knew the general idea of the book, so I thought it fit into the genre nicely.
Initially, I thought the book would mirror other works in the genre like In Time (2011) where time is used as a currency, which is then used to control the population.
I was wrong.
Hourglass is centered on this notion that scientists would one day be able to identify the exact second you would die, and as a result, society changes drastically. There are people who will die young, and people who will die old.
For the young ones, they get to have enjoyable lives filled with fun, and then they usually have a living wake, up until the exact moment they die.
For the old ones, they pick fields requiring lots of training, and they dedicate their lives to doing amazing things and raising families.
Then, there are those in-between. They get enough training to make a decent living, but they’re stuck in the middle.
So what happens when someone doesn’t die at their pre-determined time? Everyone freaks out.
I’m not going to talk about the plot as you could read it. I think the most exciting thing is the mystery even though some of it is predictable. However, Elizabeth took the time to build up the characters. She showed you this strange world through their eyes and feelings in a way that felt like you were a friend of these people.
For the first few chapters, I was interested, but I wasn’t consumed. Then I hit chapter 5, and the suspense and tension was overwhelming.
Then I finished the book two days later.
I stayed up late reading it, and I had trouble putting it down even when I had to do life stuff like take care of my kids or work. The ending was very satisfying for me, and the story arc was paced very well.
Many of the characters had really good foils, which played to the overarching themes of person vs society and society vs society. She didn’t stay too long on any of the side-stories, nor did she play out all the characters to the max. The plot was intense, but it didn’t get old. Her story got down to business.
I don’t write book reviews until now because I believe her book is fantastic and should be celebrated. The dystopian, sci-fi genre has been well saturated, but she seemed to find a nice niche of the unexplored, the unthought. The essence of the genre that I enjoy the most is the thought experiment, and this book was a compelling thought experiment.
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