This espionage-centered thriller is a little tough to rate. It is almost a if it is three novellas that are connected, but the pacing and story lines that that connect them are uneven. He is still a brilliant, creative writer and I enjoyed the characters and the plot despite its wandering. ( )

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The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes

Monumental. Well worth the wait.
The action never ends, it glides sinuously like an unstoppable dreadnought. Hayes combines some amazing storylines, bringing them together seamlessly. And while, at about 70 odd percent I almost threw in the towel at the direction the story was taking, I persevered. And it’s a darned good thing I did, because in spite of the truly out there premise, it was so well done, so humanized and normalized it has been well worth the trip. And trip it was. Some amazing technological acrobatics, combined with…..let me just say some parts brought to mind the movie “Escape From New York” or Mad Max”, alongside some episodes of Star Trek. All this with a cracking good adventure/spy story.
Oh, and a love story.
Definitely a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ production. ( )

Techno-Thriller on Steroids
Review of the upcoming Simon & Schuster Canada hardcover/audiobook/eBook (February 6, 2024) read via a NetGalley Kindle ARC (downloaded January 15, 2024).

It has been 10 years since Terry Hayes previous novel I Am Pilgrim (2013) and the long promised follow-up of The Year of the Locust is here at last. Many thriller writers would have issued several books in that time. Terry Hayes instead packs the material for 3 or 4 novels into one huge epic techno-thriller which even jumps genres into science-fiction before the conclusion is reached.

It would be a huge spoiler to provide many details. Suffice it to say that like I Am Pilgrim, the new novel also involves a hunt by an elite espionage agent for a wanted international terrorist. The CIA’s Ripley Kane is a Denied Access Area agent whose missions take him into various no-go zones throughout the world. There are several subplots to the book, but the main arc becomes his search for a mysterious figure with a tattoo of a locust across his back. It becomes evident that “the locust” is planning what in terrorist circles is described as “a spectacular”.

The first 3/4s of the book does touch on various high-end technologies of surveillance and cloaking. Some of these are likely beyond current science, but not out of the realm of possibility.
The final quarter makes a leap into the world of Einsteinian physics and into possible apocalyptic events. Readers of standard espionage thrillers may not be prepared for this and will likely even be shocked by it. But Terry Hayes is a master storyteller and you just have to let yourself go along for the ride.

I described I Am Pilgrim as outdoing Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal in the ‘hunt & evade’ thriller genre. With The Year of the Locust, this time Terry Hayes outdoes even himself.

My thanks to publishers Simon & Schuster Canada / Atria Emily Bestler Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this preview ARC, in exchange for which I provide this honest review.

Author Terry Hayes is interviewed about The Year of the Locust at Good Reading Magazine. ( )