Early Riser

This is a provisional review and rating because I've read the book only once so far.

Good points:

1. Fforde has a remarkable ability to imagine a totally bizarre world and bring it to life in every detail, and he's done it again here. I was impressed throughout.

2. At least at first reading, the story is gripping. Circumstances prevented me from reading it at one sitting, but I wanted to come back to it.

Bad points:

1. The scenario is rather grim and macabre: a world in deep freeze, haunted by nightmares.

2. The characters are varied, but mostly lack positive appeal, and appearances can be deceptive: some apparently nice characters turn out to be bad, and at least one nasty character turns out to be good.

3. The first-person protagonist seems to have a weak sense of sexual identity, and his/her sex isn't well established; for no particular reason, I initially assumed that I was reading about a woman. In Chapter 2, the name ‘Charlie' is introduced, which is usually male, but could be a diminutive of various female names. It's unusual to get some way into a book without being sure of the sex of the main character, and it's not clear whether Fforde is doing this on purpose or by mistake.

Although Fforde books always have some element of humour, they tend to be set in more or less dystopian scenarios, and I read them despite this, not because of it. I usually avoid dystopias.