The Many is a trilogy made up of the three
books: The Many, Ancestral, and European School. It is part thriller, part mystery,
part conspiracy theory, with a dash of horror thrown in.
Book One starts with siblings Karl and
Stacy. Stacy goes out on a date with a doctor she met on an app that seems far
too good to be true. When she comes back the next morning, Karl notices that
her behaviour has changed somewhat even though she insists the date went well. She
is more aggressive, her demeanour has sexual undertones, and she even accuses Karl
of lusting after her. As the days go by, she sinks further and further into
high and low episodes where she starts remembering men without faces and having
sex in an underground room. Not long after this, it all becomes too much for
her and she does something drastic.
Elsewhere, Isobel, Dawn’s mother, also uses
an app to find a date and the same scenario occurs with her where her moods
swing violently and she starts remembering bad things that happened to her.
Isobel feels compelled to do the same as Stacy did, leaving Dawn looking for
answers.
On essentially the same quest, Karl and
Dawn’s paths intersect on the journey to find the faceless men. Both of them
will be pushed into situations they could never imagine themselves in and make
decisions that will change their lives forever.
As they move through the next book, Dawn
discovers that she may have been a part of the whole thing from the beginning
once she is kidnapped and discovers she is pregnant. The book now moves through
Karl looking for her and being pursued by the faceless men. The story opens
wider with more twists, and new characters being introduced.
This leads into the concluding book which
starts of with a completely different setting and different set of characters.
Elijah is being sent to an elite boarding school that is not found on any map
and once he is dropped off, he may not see anyone outside the school until he
graduates. The schoolgoers are odd in a number of ways. They all look similar,
the teachers are afraid of the older ones, and the ones in higher years have
secrets that they keep aggressively, with the explanation that the younger ones
will learn in time. Elijah also comes
across a deformed person living under the school that no one will acknowledge
is there. The culmination of the story is the intersection of the three characters
and the underlying secret behind the entire plot. Who is the actual kingpin?
I received this trilogy from NetGalley
(thank you for that) and was looking forward to a three-book thriller/horror
fest. The story starts with a great hook, and even though some details are
quite graphic, you really have no clue why certain things are happening. Book
one sucks you in and sets up the base story while not giving you too much to
work on when it comes to figuring out the reason. Book two adds more clues and you get to see a
different side of the characters – especially Dawn and using violence to get
information by any means necessary. Certain parts ask you to stretch the
believability factor and things like the “cult ritual” had my eyebrows raised
in disbelief at the ease of it happening (this may have taken place in the third
one but they all kinda blurred together for me). Book three takes place fifteen
years later, so, in the interim, a lot has happened. This book stretched things
even further and took one of the oldest conspiracy theories to use as its base.
I was hoping for a fresh idea, but this one has been done before. Book one drew
me in quickly and book two kept me going for a while, but by book three, I was
reading for the sake of reading. The pacing and story just threw it off-angle
and I was disappointed with the ending. To have characters “accepting” the
reason why didn’t feel right.
Karl started off as a strong character, but
as time went by, I kept questioning why he was giving up his whole life. And
considering what happened to him, well... Dawn may have been pushed to
extremes, but her behaviour became too inconsistent and her ability to “persuade”
seemed odd. Elijah’s parentage – we will just leave it at that…
So this is a bit of a mixed bag. It starts
off with a great idea but fizzles out. Things are not all ended/explained and
bits like the masks would have been interesting to find out more about. Kudos
to the writer though for the style of writing and the “almost there” story.
Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review the book.
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