ESPERANCE, alt-hist/many-worlds Chicago noir thriller

ESPERANCE
ADAM OYEBANJI
DAW Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.99 ebook, available tomorrow

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The history-bending speculative fiction from Adam Oyebanji, award-winning author of BRAKING DAY.

An impossible death: Detective Ethan Krol has been called to the scene of a baffling murder: a man and his son, who appear to have been drowned in sea-water. But the nearest ocean is a thousand miles away.

An improbable story: Hollie Rogers doesn’t want to ask too many questions of her new friend, Abi Eniola. Abi claims to be an ordinary woman from Nigeria, but her high-tech gadgets and extraordinary physical abilities suggest she’s not telling the whole truth.

An incredible quest: As Ethan’s investigation begins to point towards Abi, Hollie’s fears mount. For Abi is very much not who she seems. And it won’t be long before Ethan and Hollie find themselves playing a part in a story that spans cultures, continents… and centuries.

An extraordinary speculative thriller about the scars left by the Atlantic slave-trade, by a master of the genre.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Why you're reading this story will largely color your response to it. SFF readers might not vibe with the very significant police-procedural elements narrated by noirish Ethan the cop. Mystery readers might not love the time-travel, in the many-worlds sense, done by Abi the morally grey alternating PoV.

I'm the reader with a foot and nine toes in each of those camps, plus another entire foot in the alternate-history camp. (There are so three feet! Where? In between worlds where the vibrational body exists and has access to all body parts. Quit quibbling, this has two guys who drowned in the ocean discovered dead in their Chicago apartment!)

I'm so glad to read a thriller inflected with quantum reality, which I am all about in my reading. It felt a bit like Author Oyebanji decided this would be his book, and spent his time plotting the story to the detriment of developing either Abi or Ethan more fully. I'm okay with that because the resolution to the crime we're here to read about was so exactly aimed at me and my personal hobbyhorses. I disliked the detective Ethan's racism being foregrounded. It didn't cause any stars to disappear, but it did make me squirm. As I think that was the point of including it, I mention the fact of it for reader guidance.

Abi's intriguing back/foreground was something I'd read a whole book about all by itself. Hollie, the sidekick, was so pathetically enamored of Abi that it got a little uncomfortable. I mean, I totally get it, and I was a little bit there, too. /but really cringe, Author Oyebanji, in that last bit about gbese.

What the gestalt of the book did not have, as I mentioned above, feels as though it was designed out by the author to leave the fundamental rocks under the story...not revenge, not even forgiveness can leach sin clean...in brightest contrast. It worked for me, I think it might work for all y'all who like your stories sleek, clear, and propulsively paced.

Four and a half shiny, happy stars.