After his wife is killed, Tibor Tarent returns to Britain and realizes that he may be living in a reality that has been altered due to a theoretical physicist developing a method which diverts matter with devastating consequences. - (Baker & Taylor)
In the near future, Tibor Tarent, a freelance photographer, is recalled from Anatolia to Britain when his wife, an aid worker, is killed--annihilated by a terrifying weapon that reduces its target to a triangular patch of scorched earth. A century earlier, Tommy Trent, a stage magician, is sent to the Western Front on a secret mission to render British reconnaissance aircraft invisible to the enemy. Present day: a theoretical physicist develops a new method of diverting matter, a discovery with devastating consequences that will resonate through time. - (Baker & Taylor)
Returning to a terrorism-stricken Britain of the near future, a recently widowed photographer discovers similarities between attacks in West London and the incident that killed his wife before being drawn into an obscure government organization with links to H.G. Wells and major historical wars. By the award-winning author of The Islanders. - (Baker & Taylor)
The eagerly anticipated new novel from “one of the master illusionists of our time.” (Wired)
In the near future, Tibor Tarent, a freelance photographer, is recalled from Anatolia to Britain when his wife, an aid worker, is killed—annihilated by a terrifying weapon that reduces its target to a triangular patch of scorched earth.
A century earlier, Tommy Trent, a stage magician, is sent to the Western Front on a secret mission to render British reconnaissance aircraft invisible to the enemy.
Present day. A theoretical physicist develops a new method of diverting matter, a discovery with devastating consequences that will resonate through time. - (Random House, Inc.)
*Starred Review* Like some sort of self-assembling jigsaw puzzle, Priest's new novel starts out as a handful of stories that appear unconnected either by character or by chronology. But, as we follow the stories, we eventually realize that these characters, despite being separated by time, are linked via a Nobel-winning theoretical physicist and his discovery, the Perturbative Adjacent Field. Priest, a master of deception and misdirection (The Separation, 2005), is being especially mysterious here, leaving us to work out even such basic things as whether the book is set in this reality or an alternate version (the photographer's story seems set in a world in which Britain is an Islamic state, but, on the other hand, the story about a stage magician tasked by the British military to make airplanes appear invisible to ground-based observers seems pretty clearly set during the historical WWII). We frequently get the sense that, like a stage magician, Priest is deliberately focusing our attention on one thing, while he's doing something else, something subtle, between the lines. While it's definitely not a book for people who prefer their fiction to be linear, The Adjacent is a wonderful piece of fiction, an intricate puzzle that asks the reader to pay close attention and to read not just the text, but also the subtext and its implications. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
In the near future, photographer Timor Tarent is returning to Britain from eastern Turkey, grieving the recent loss of his wife, Melanie, in a roadside terrorist attack. But before readers can find out too much about Timor, the story jumps to World War I and a stage magician named Tommy Trent, and then moves to a World War II-era airfield and another avatar of Timor, interweaving back and forth among what appear to be echoes in time and space. VERDICT Priest (The Prestige; The Islanders) explores love and loss in all of these asymmetrical narratives, put together like a slightly disjointed puzzle. The unexplained echoes of characters throughout various time periods along with the lack of a detailed explanation of the mysterious weapons technology known as adjacency might leave some readers unsettled, but those receptive to a more open-ended storytelling style will find this novel utterly absorbing.
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