by Blake Crouch ★★★☆☆
I've enjoyed Blake Crouch's novels over the last few years. Dark Matter, Recursion, and Upgrade were all worth a read. And so perhaps it was a case of inflated expectations, but Abandon didn't quite hit the mark I was hoping for.
The novel bounces between two storylines -- one set in 1893 and one in the present day -- and centers around the town of Abandon, an old mining town in the mountains outside of Durango, Colorado. We learn early on that all of the residents of the town mysteriously disappeared in 1893 and no remains have ever been found. And as is the case with many a story involving mining, we also come to learn that there are rumors of a stash of gold somewhere in or around the town.
The present day story centers around main character Abigail Foster, a journalist who is reluctantly reunited with her father, Lawrence, at his request for an expedition to the old town of Abandon. Lawrence waled out on -- or, one might say abandoned -- Abigail and her mother when Abigail was only a few years old, and Abigail still harbors anger and frustration over that, having had no contact with her father for over 20 years. In that time, Lawrence has become the foremost modern authority on the history of Abandon, and he has made it his mission to try to understand what happened to the occupants. And, while he's searching for the truth about the residents of the town, it wouldn't hurt if he accidentally stumbled on the location of the rumored stash of gold. Abigail and Lawrence join a pair of guides, as well as a couple of paranormal photographers on the expedition.
Crouch gradually reveals what happened to the residents of the town in his 1893 flashbacks, while the present day expedition starts to run into some serious trouble. There are A LOT of characters in the book -- perhaps 30 or more, between both time periods -- and even at 450 or so pages, it was not nearly enough time to develop all of them. The result was that I, as a reader, never truly cared about their fate. I actually found myself more drawn to the modern day story, to the point that it became annoying when I'd have to spend time reading through an 1893 section of chapters (complete with 1983 speech patterns), to learn about a large group of characters I cared little about.
There are moments in the book that are decent. Crouch still writes compelling action sequences, and the smaller cast of characters in the "present day" sections allowed for greater depth of character development and cohesion of the story. I do think Crouch did an interesting job of tying the events of 1893 to the outcome of the present day story as well, to the point that I started to lean towards 4 stars for this. But the reality is that I was mostly just waiting for it to be over, and so while it was partially salvaged, it is not one I'd recommend.
It's not a terrible read, but it did not satisfy in the way that Crouch's previous novels did. I would skip this one, and instead try Crouch's Dark Matter (if you're in the mood for a mind-bending multi-verse novel) or Upgrade (if you feel like an action-packed sci-fi novel about genetically-enhanced humans).
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