Awakened

Science has taken humans to amazing places, prolonged our lives, made living better, but it has also created great harm. Have some diseases been developed in a lab then released, on purpose or by accident? Perhaps legitimate research led to tragic mistakes. In the world of Laura Elliott’s Awakened, a revolutionary piece of technology that allowed people to stay awake and be more productive and freer, leads to what could be the end of the world. 

When working alongside fellow scientists Dr Thea Chares thought she was inventing technology that would make the world a better place. A simple chip that nullifies the brain’s need for sleep, all those nights free to make more art, be more productive, live a longer life. However, it is years later, and things went very wrong. Thea is only one of a few survivors hunkered down in the Tower of London looking for a cure to a disease that turned most of the population into The Sleepless. 

Science Fiction can be a lot of different things and that is why it is my favourite genre. You can have an action-packed book, or a more cerebral one. With the concept of a Dystopian future in which unhinged Sleepless attack the living on sight, I was thinking Awakened was going to be a vampire like action thriller. It is certainly not this. Instead, it is a far smaller and cerebral novel about only a few characters. It has hints of The Thing, and I am Legend but takes a more thoughtful route. 

A lot of the pacing is down to the narrative style that Elliott chose. The book is written as a series of diary entries over months. These act as a way of creating a non-linear narrative. Thea may write about the current events of the day or instead reflect on her past. On other occasions we get a glimpse into her dreams. This allows Elliott to move back and forth to reveal the twists and turns. The diary entries may be written in lineal time, but their contents could be anything. 

The reader is introduced to various concepts piecemeal. Fans of intelligent science fiction will enjoy the challenge of balancing the various themes and questioning how they are linked. I must admit to struggling to know where I was in terms of timeline. Was this the present or a write up of a memory? There are moments of action, but they are few and mixed in with the non-linear style of the book. 

Within the pages are some thoughtful ideas. How did the Sleepless come about, can they be cured, who are the mysterious strangers that arrive at the gate? We learn about these aspects in diary entries both present and past, where we also learn more about Thea. What drove her to work on a chip to prevent sleep? We learn about the relationship she has with her mother and how her mother’s illness as a child shaped her in a way to unknowingly end the world as we know it. 

Awakened is a Science Fiction novel or Cerebral Horror that will appeal to readers who like a slower pace in their novels and a plethora of meaty ideas to dig into. I enjoyed the reveals dotted through the book and the thoughtful way that illness and disabilities are treated. It was not the weighty ideas in the book that I found a little difficult to follow, but the non-linear diary style, this mixed with the emotional aspects of Thea made me lose what was happening on occasion.