The Bottom Line: The one book you might actually re-read this year. It’s that good and that deep.
Even after closing out his superb Brilliance trilogy, Markus Sakey is apparently still drawn to the idea of a federal agent wrestling with both terrorism and an existence that stretches the notion of reality. In Afterlife, the last thing FBI agent Will Brody remembers is the explosion—a thousand shards of glass surfing a lethal shock wave. He wakes without a scratch.
The building is in ruins. His team is gone. Outside, Chicago is dark. Cars lie abandoned. No planes cross the sky. He’s relieved to spot other people—until he sees they’re carrying machetes.
Say what? Welcome to the afterlife, apparently. Claire McCoy stands over the body of Will Brody. As head of an FBI task force, she hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. A terrorist has claimed eighteen lives and thrown the nation into panic.
It turns out that the line between life and death is narrower than any of us suspect—and all that matters to Will and Claire is getting back to each other.
The question Sakey asks – what if death is just the beginning? – is hardly original. And yet Afterlife feels completely fresh. Despite Sakey’s revisitation of familiar character archetypes and themes, Afterlife is unlike anything you’ve ever read, and the audiobook narration soulfully delivered by Finty Williams.
