The Fold

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.

My first exposure to Peter Clines' work was thanks to Audible, which recommended his earlier novel, 14. I rarely buy books without existing knowledge or recommendations to go on, but the summary sounded really interesting - a man moves into a Los Angeles apartment building and starts experiencing mysterious and possibly supernatural events - and the narrator, Ray Porter, was excellent. I ended up really enjoying that book, and added Clines to the short list of authors I plan on reading as thoroughly as possible. Accordingly, when I saw that he had a new novel coming out this year, I immediately wanted to get my hands on it.

In The Fold, teleportation is a reality... but it's not quite ready for public consumption. Enter Mike Erikson, a man with an eidetic memory hired to find out why the scientists involved refuse to share their invention with the world. Thanks to his observational skills and analytical mind, he soon discovers that things are not what they seem and that "the fold" is far more dangerous than anyone imagined.

The Fold's strongest points are its plotting and sheer readability. I tore through the book in a matter of days, and I was definitely hooked throughout, forgoing sleep and important chores so that I could continue reading. Clines is skilled at subtly injecting creeping horror into his stories, and I loved that feeling of being slowly drawn into something horribly doomed. Clines also injects timely pop culture references throughout, which makes the book feel grounded in the here and now

Anyone who has read Clines' previous work knows that he has a fondness for a certain brand of cosmic horror. When hints of a connection to the world of 14 started cropping up in The Fold, I immediately had a guess where the story might be going. Although this did make the book slightly more predictable for me, I was also excited to know that Clines was continue to play in a setting that I throughly enjoyed.

Unfortunately, the characterization in The Fold isn't quite up to snuff. Mike isn't given much depth other than his stated discomfort with using his intellectual abilities, and we are only provided the barest glimpse into his life before this story begins. Most of the time it felt like his function in the plot was more important than who he was as a person, and ultimately he became a kind of Holmes pastiche without the humanizing flaws or down-to-earth partner.

The other characters don't fare better. The supporting cast is a bit one-note, and Jamie, the love interest, reads like such a wish-fulfillment cliché that Clines hangs a lantern on it:

She sighed. “All that brain power and it never occurred to you why a cheerleader turned into a computer geek?”

“I just figured you were some Internet male fantasy come to life.”

I was also disappointed that the novel raises existential issues like whether you're still the same person after you teleport and then quickly discards them in favor of resolving the story with a series of bloody fights. In fact, the climactic scenes don't really have anything to do with the side effects of teleportation. Instead, they turn The Fold into the kind of story you could tell about any door into a hostile place, and felt like a bit of a re-tread of 14 in some ways.

Although I did enjoy reading The Fold, I definitely wish the characterization had been stronger. I think there might be a more interesting version of this book, perhaps in an alternate universe, where Clines draws his primary influences from Philip K. Dick's worries about reality and selfhood. I do still recommend checking out his work, however, and I'm hoping there will be further books in this world.