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Prospera is a lovely island isolated — protected — from the rest of the world. Its inhabitants live rich lives and pursue knowledge and creative endeavors. Their lives are typically longer than what’s common now, and they have access to excellent health care, beauty treatments of all sorts, and relaxation and recreation.
When the monitors embedded in their arms indicate that their health has dipped below 10 percent, they retire themselves from life and are taken by the ferry to the Nursery, where they are erased and rebooted as teenagers. These new young people come back to Prospera and get to start over and live fulfilling lives once again.
Proctor Bennett is a ferryman: he works at the government office where arrangements are made for citizens to go to the Nursery. He accompanies these people and takes care of their paperwork and helps them to feel comfortable as they get ready to start afresh.
But his own life is a little unsettling: he’s been having dreams, for one, and no one has dreams on Prospera. His monitor is showing he’s not at the healthy level he should be at his age. And then his own father (technically guardian, because no one gives birth, only adopts the teens coming over from the Nursery) comes to his end, and it doesn’t go smoothly. He gives Proctor a strange message just as he’s forced to get on the ferry.
As Proctor starts questioning some things he’s accepted as facts, the people who live on a connected island and who work for the Prosperan citizens are becoming restless. Their lives of servitude are not beautiful and fulfilling, and talk of revolution is circulating. Some are adherents of the idea of “Arrival,” almost a religious belief in something important coming soon.
Proctor and a few other primary characters start searching for the truth, and I found myself enthralled with the story, eager to find out the truth myself. In a book like this, anything is possible, and I turned digital pages quickly as I pieced clues together and came up with my own theories. I found the big picture to be fascinating, and the one simple but powerful truth that drove the story to be poignant. And there I just can’t say more because it would spoil any other reader’s experience. The whole book, all 538 pages of it, held my attention from start to finish and was crafted in such a way that the conclusion was very satisfying. The Ferryman came together perfectly. Such a cool story.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 64 uses of strong language, around 25 instances of moderate profanity, about 45 uses of mild language, and about 35 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes references to people having sex and to affairs but no details. Violence is high in several places throughout the book, with people being killed and seriously injured by gunshots, beating and other methods. There are some areas with blood and gore.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
