From bestselling comic-book franchise writer Charles Soule comes a clever and witty first novel of a twentysomething New Yorker who wakes up one morning with the power to predict the future—perfect for fans of Joe Hill and Brad Meltzer, or books like This Book Is Full of Spiders and Welcome to Night Vale.Knowledge is power. So when an unassuming Manhattan bassist named Will Dando awakens from a … Will Dando awakens from a dream one morning with 108 predictions about the future in his head, he rapidly finds himself the most powerful man in the world. Protecting his anonymity by calling himself the Oracle, he sets up a heavily guarded Web site with the help of his friend Hamza to selectively announce his revelations. In no time, global corporations are offering him millions for exclusive access, eager to profit from his prophecies.
He’s also making a lot of high-powered enemies, from the President of the United States and a nationally prominent televangelist to a warlord with a nuclear missile and an assassin grandmother. Legions of cyber spies are unleashed to hack the Site—as it’s come to be called—and the best manhunters money can buy are deployed not only to unmask the Oracle but to take him out of the game entirely. With only a handful of people he can trust—including a beautiful journalist—it’s all Will can do to simply survive, elude exposure, and protect those he loves long enough to use his knowledge to save the world.
Delivering fast-paced adventure on a global scale as well as sharp-witted satire on our concepts of power and faith, Marvel writer Charles Soule’s audacious debut novel takes readers on a rollicking ride where it’s impossible to predict what will happen next.
more
The Oracle Year stood out as an intense thriller about a man who suddenly saw the future. However, it failed to capture and hold this reader’s interest for long.
Promising Premise
Oh, where do I start. I hate writing negative reviews; I do. Nevertheless, I cannot force myself to like something just because I feel bad.
Needless to say, I was not too fond of The Oracle Year. However, it had such a promising premise that led me to buy the novel. A man wakes up and has over a hundred premonitions spanning three years in a single night. Since bringing to life his online persona as “The Oracle,” he has attracted the attention of some very powerful people.
I was drawn to that, drawn to the story, and I wanted to see how it would play out.
Unfortunately, I checked out on page 106. The pacing was just so slow, so tedious slow.
Yes, no one knows whom he is except his best friend helping him make money off selling his premonitions. It is not a scam; his premonitions have proven to be true. However, when the story shifts to the FBI agent, a TV priest, and then to this reporter, and then to his friend, I was bored.
There was not enough to make me care about these other characters, and their story arcs did not raise the narrative’s tension. One would think the tension would rise with the development of the FBI plot, but again, I did not care for the story, and it just did not make sense to me as a writer why the government was so interested in finding out who he was. They reasoned that his existence was threatening to the reelection of the president. I mean, really? It was boring.
And the reporter? I could not understand why her need to write about the Oracle was essential to the plot. It seemed superfluous.
And his best friend? Honestly, I could care less about his personal life because it added nothing to the story again.
I was just wholly disappointed in the narrative. I liked the main protagonist because he seemed like a decent character. He was just a bassist who worked gig to gig and then suddenly could see the future. He has so many doubts about making money for them, much guilt. He genuinely comes off as a good guy, a well-written one. However, all the others I could have done without. I did not hate them, but I did not love them either. I was indifferent about them and was uninterested in reading their plot lines.
Final Thoughts
I tried, tried to like The Oracle Year, read it, and avoid the dreaded DNF pile. However, unfortunately, this book was a bore with slow pacing and uninteresting characters.
Too often I figure out what’s going to happen waaaaaay too soon. I love books that surprise me and make me think about a new perspective. This one nails it!!
Such an original story, couldn’t put the book down!
Interesting characters that are developed deeply as the story evolves. the surmise of the story and the involvement of the plot exhibits an opportunity to explore human interests and emotional complexity which the author owns and explores in complete harmony with the story
I didn’t care much for the portrayal of Christians as a whole in this book, nor did I care for some of the profanity. That said, the plot was intriguing and kept me interested despite my aversion to those other things.
Based on an original premise, the book took us along on a description of what might happen if one person could suddenly see a small slice of the future.
While most “information from the future” books describe unlimited vision, Will Dando’s are limited; he has 104 predictions that come to him in a dream.
this was such an original read. I liked the quirks of each of the individual characters, and the twists and turns the story took. It was a fast paced, interesting read. It makes you think about what the government would do if this actually happened to someone.
This was a cool construct, executed well. There’s a surprising bit of social commentary buried in the fiction, and it really added a nice dimension to the book. It’s not always subtle in presentation, but it does sneak up on you nevertheless – I found my mind drifting back to tidbits after I would put it down… There were some twists – some of which felt more genuine and others more contrived, but on the whole, the story moved along at a great pace and came full circle nicely.
Fantastic read. So many twists and turns