Matt McAvoy Book Review

This is an interesting book, with a good storyline, and Avinash writes it well, articulately and professionally.  It does feel a bit too long, though, and is indeed a very wordy book, which is perhaps hindered a little by this fact.  The reason for this is that at times it is quite easy to lose focus, as many of the same points are revisited time and again, but take long word counts to reach the bullet points.  I do like the multi-person narrative viewpoints, but again, because you spend so long getting from one story arc to the next, it feels a little like labouring the fundamental storyline elements.  Indeed, there were moments of confusion for me, but then ultimately pretty much all of these could be very quickly redeemed by reminding myself that most is taking place within dreams.  Think of the movie Inception, and you’ll have some idea of the premise of this book, only instead of industrial espionage, and instead of embedding thoughts through dreams, Mindbender is about extracting information to solve crimes.

I did enjoy it to a point.  I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it was a little shorter and more concise.  Avinash is clearly a very good author, and a very intelligent one, but I definitely think a more ruthless approach to cutting content would improve the book, with an emphasis on reducing word count.  As far as low sci-fi suspense goes, I think you could do a lot worse as a reader, but I do recommend locking yourself away for this one, and removing distractions, as it can get a little convoluted.  Some of this convolution feels a little unnecessary, and there are a few bewildering moments – but again, all of these can be made much clearer in the mind of the reader by reminding themselves: “It’s a dream.”  When the story arcs and strands do come together, it feels like a satisfying conclusion to a long journey, but one which ultimately really was a little testing to reach.  That said, the book is a fine one, and the writer is a good one, and probably worth a read if you like a bit of dream-based fantasy with a darker, more brutal edge.