====== Passenger 23, by Sebastian Fitzek ======

ISBN: 9781838934514\\
Amazon ID: [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B082NZW94G|B082NZW94G]]

Sebastian is a German author, but German books are ridiculously expensive (due to anti-discounting laws), and even Amazon.de sells the [[https://www.amazon.de/dp/B082NZW94G|English-language]] versions for far less than the [[https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00K64SO4Y|German-language]] editions.

So, I bought the English edition of this.
===== Initial thoughts =====

Who are all these people, and what are they doing here?

This is a very confusing book to start with, and it doesn't let up easily.

In the first 75% or so of the story, you'll probably be wondering a combination of "who is this and what do they have to do with the story I've just been reading?" and "why would anyone in their right mind decide to do that and then put themselves in __this__ situation?"

===== Later thoughts =====

I gave up at chapter 63 (of 76) just as things got __totally__ weird, and I went off to read something reasonable instead for a while.

Why?  Well, imagine that you're walking through a maze - one of those outdoor ones, made of hedges, and you decide that you've seen all the dead ends you need to see, and there just isn't a way through the maze.  Then you decide to walk all the way to the end of one of the dead ends, and you realise that there's a hole in the ground, not visible until you're right there, and it leads down to another layer of maze.

It's three dimensional.

That's what the plot of this story feels like - you're used to the usual twists and turns of thrillers and detective stories, but then suddenly this one throws a couple of things at you which are so bizarre (and frankly unbelievable) that you can't cope, and need to come back to normal fiction for a while, just to get your head straight.

Once you've had a bit of a rest and come back to finish this book off, you find out that in fact it is a very unpleasant story about a very unpleasant topic, and not what it seemed from the start at all.

Once you get to the __very__ end (indeed, after the achknowledgements) you find out that you haven't been reading a book after all - you've been reading two.  There are two totally unrelated but intertwined stories in this book, and that's the primary reason for thinking "who are all these people and what are they doing here?" that you get in the first 50% - 75%.  Why didn't he just write two different books, both set on board cruise ships?
===== Summary =====

Don't.

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