Dan FreyRezensionen

Strange but fun. About a father looking for his lost daughter, who slowly begins to suspect that she has disappeared into a fairy-tale world. Told in epistolary form to good effect. Really about stories, the power of them, and the importance of imagination over strict adherence to reality.

Byron Kidd's twelve year old daughter disappears one day with the only clue being a note saying that she is off to explore the Hidden World, a reference to a magical world in a popular YA fantasy series. It turns out that she isn't the only one that has gone missing under mysterious circumstances tied to this book series.

The journalist Byron, unsatisfied with the lack of progress in the police investigation, decides to do some digging himself in a quest to find his daughter. He journeys from the East Coast to Los Angeles where the author of the book series lives. In the course of his research, he finds that there appear to be parts of the fantasy world blending with the real world. Can he find out what happened to his daughter and the other missing children?

I found the premise of this book very intriguing and the cover is gorgeous. The book is told through journal entries, Reddit posts, interviews and excerpts. While this isn't my favorite style, it seemed to fit here. I found the character of Byron to be a very unlikable person almost all the way through the book. In his defense, his teenage daughter is missing and presumed dead while his wife and others have tried to move on. As a parent, I cannot imagine what that must be like. As a reader, it was really hard to sympathize with him because he is a jerk, lies to people constantly to get what he thinks he needs, drinks like a fish, and looks down on pretty much everyone, especially if you are a woman.

I found this book to be a REALLY slow burn. Things don't really get started until almost 40% in and the action really doesn't ramp up until the last 20% or so. There was a lot of buildup but a quick ending so pacing seemed a little off. It was hard to get a rhythm going due to the writing style changing constantly and Byron's run on sentence journal entries getting in the way. Without the supporting character of Misha, the operator of a popular fan site dedicated to the YA fantasy book series, this would have been a tough read. Byron is just not a fun character to spend time with.

There were some bright spots in this creatively put together modern fantasy novel but it is hard to root for the main character even though his goal is to be reunited with his daughter who he didn't spend enough time with growing up because he was busy with work. Once the fantasy and real world started blending, the book got going but it took awhile. The ending was rushed but was satisfying.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for honest feedback.½

One of the best [SciFi) books I ever read! This will definitely be in my Top 5 for 2021. The premise is absolutely brilliant. But what makes this book so damn appealing is how it is constructed, through emails, text messages, and transcripts, which not only moves the story along at a fast pace, but it brings the ideas and the characters to life in a way that I have never experienced before.

If you are a lover of this genre or are just interested in a great read, do yourself a huge favor and pick this one up ASAP. It is timely, fun, spot-on accurate in accessing how we interact and consume technology in our daily lives

This book is fantastic. It brings to mind the Neverending Story. I highly recommend for any lover of fairy tales.

In DREAMBOUND, by Dan Frey, Byron Kidd's daughter is missing and using his skills and guile as a journalist, Byron goes on a determined search to find his daughter. Will his cynicism is in full force, clue after clue that leads to his daughter seem more and more magical and lack real world substantiation. Byron slowly begins to see that he doesn't understand everything and only when he decides to accept all possibilities does it quickly become clear that he might actually find her.
This novel I felt especially connected to as a dad. Byron's absolutely blind determination to find his daughter and his willingness to abandon his entire belief system if it means he can rescue her is so moving and inspirational. As the search continues, Byron begins to see the world through his daughter's eyes and when he sees himself through her eyes, he is equal parts sad that he didn't do better and even more committed to not only finding his daughter but to become a better father to her. The book also dives into the world of book series fandom, cosplayer, fan fiction and the like. Percy does a good job of not passing judgment (good or bad) on the book series obsession that can often become a young adult book phenomenon, but rather he presents it for what it is: a young person's search for self and purpose. Finally, this book can be seen as a love letter to storytelling and all of the wonderfully imaginative things that can come from sharing a story.
Endearing and electrifying, DREAMBOUND is a book I won't soon forget and the ending is one of the most unique and beautiful endings I've read in the last few years.
Thank you to Random House/Ballantine/Del Rey, Dan Frey, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Dreambound by Dan Frey is a fantasy novel that is highly recommended for lovers of the genre.

Byron Kidd’s twelve-year-old daughter Liza vanishes from their home in Boston. She leaves a note stuck in her favorite fantasy book written by Annabelle Tobin saying that she’s going to the end of the world - basically to the land found in the book. Liza is not the only child to do so. Byron is a reporter and decides to uncover the truth behind his daughter's disappearance along with others. The last known clue to her whereabouts is a ping from her phone identifying her location as in Los Angeles. Byron goes to L.A. and begins to use all his skills to interview people and uncover clues about where his daughter could be.

The narrative is told through journal entries, transcripts, emails, texts, and excerpts from Tobin’s novels, Dreambound and other fairy tales. This modern epistolary approach to the novel works very well and moves at a smooth, quick pace. The plot is compelling and interesting while the suspense remains high to the end.

The characters are unique and all portrayed as fully realized individuals. Not all characters are likeable or trustworthy, but they all resemble people you may know or see daily. In the end, setting all the fantastical elements aside, this is a novel about a father searching for his missing daughter, as well as an ode to the love of stories.

I will admit to not being a huge fan of all genres of fantasy novels and tend more to science fiction, but the plot held my interest throughout. Those who enjoy fantasy will likely enjoy this novel even more than I did.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Random House via NetGalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2023/09/dreambound.html

Surprises are rare. The last book that had me “turning” e-page after page to find out what happened next was Andy Weir's The Martian. Then this. Because Dreambound was so unfamiliar, so new, I had no idea what would come. I usually can't help but try to figure it out before the protagonist does, or at least predict what’s coming next. That didn't happen here. Mr. Rey wrote something that engaged me so that I didn't want to spoil what was unfolding (Chapter Twenty Two - whoa and F*********k!). That is refreshing. This book was gripping and I was turning those e-pages as fast as I could read. I would have finished it it one sitting if I didn't have life and all intervening. And the pace accelerated until the (okay, I did allow myself one prediction) frenetic end.

Disclosure 1) I rarely summarize fiction plots, mainly because I think it unfair to the author - there are plenty of people who do for those on the hunt, and there is almost always an extra teaser blurb somewhere - and I think it unfair to the reader who, like me, dislikes spoilers. Still,Frey crafts two worlds - the in-book imagined Hidden one, and a more familiarly grounded, yet still slightly different "real" one. And weaves them well in a non-traditional form of storytelling.

Disclosure 2) I received an advance review copy of this from NetGalley and thank the marketing rep from the publisher Del Rey/Penguin Random House for suggesting it to me.

This was such a breath of fresh air for an epistolary sci-fi novel! It stayed light hearted and breezy, even when the fate of the world was at stake.

I loved the way the characters all operated, and how easy it was to understand their motivations. Even in the longer segments of speech, I knew exactly who was speaking. The texts and emails all felt realistic and I had so much fun with the way the tone shifted--especially throughout their emails with investors.

The plot held together throughout with just a little bit of suspension of disbelief. There was one moment that mentioned Covid that made me sigh because alas the author didn't have access to the Future, but other than that, it was easy to get sucked into this world.

Del Rey sold this to me since I liked Blake Crouch, Rob Hart, and Sylvain Neuvel, and I wasn't disappointed. This has the fast-paced, easy writing of Sylvain Neuvel; the thought-provoking question marks of Rob Hart; and the easy-to-digest yet super clever science of Blake Crouch.

Told in a series of emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, The Future Is Yours is an interesting character study of two young men dreaming of fame, fortune, and making a difference in the world. The difficult birth of a computer that accurately shows what is going on in the world one year in the future makes compelling listening, especially when the dynamics of differing personalities, the headaches of being forced to listen to the people holding the purse strings, and the implications of the technology itself are added to the mix.

With the book's format of texts, emails, transcripts, and blog posts, I think The Future Is Yours is best listened to in audiobook format where the different voices can help keep readers focused on the story. I have a strong suspicion that, if I'd read this instead of listened to it, the endless stream of emails, etc. would have made my eyes glaze over from time to time whether I wanted them to or not.

If you're in the mood for a fast-paced character study about a rather scary possible technological breakthrough, I recommend Frey's thriller. It will make you think-- Do you really want to see into the future?½

Frey, Dan. The Future Is Yours. Del Rey, 2021.
Dan Frey’s The Future Is Yours is time travel tech thriller that owes a lot to Paycheck, which was first a 1953 short story by Philip K. Dick, then a 2003 movie directed by John Woo and starring Ben Affleck. In the Dick/Woo story an evil corporation develops a computer that predicts the collapse of civilization caused by our knowing too much about the future. In Frey’s novel, Ben Boyce and Adhvan Chaudry, two students at Stanford (and, yes, there is a direct allusion to Larry and Sergei), form a company to work on quantumly entangling a computer with itself a year in the future. This would allow information from the future to be transferred to the past. That future is in our own timeline and theoretically unalterable. If you read your own future obituary and kill yourself, where does causation reside? But never mind. These two guys are optimists, at least for a while. Where Frey’s novel separates itself from Paycheck is in how it handles characters and literary form. The partners are flawed friends who in their own way betray each other. Ben is a flamboyant salesman who wants to make the world a better place. His partner is a socially withdrawn genius who guiltily lusts after his partner’s wife. Both are conscious of being ethnic outsiders in the big money world of Silicon Valley. The literary form is something like an epistolary novel, which had its beginnings in the 18th century. There is no live action. Instead, we follow the story through the kinds of documents our culture now produces in abundance: emails, text messages, and meeting transcripts. It is almost as if human beings do not exist outside their digital footprints. In this novel, friends and lovers are seldom described as meeting face to face. There is an eerie realism in this. Oddly enough, the novel does not delve into our videoconferencing culture, whose temporal footprints are even more evanescent than digital text. Some readers complain about the sudden turn the novel takes in its final pages, but such plot twists are almost inevitable in time travel narratives. Geekily good. 4 stars.

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Title: The Future is Yours
Series: ---------
Authors: Dan Frey
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF Thriller
Pages: 226
Words: 69K

Synopsis:

From the Publisher

If you had the chance to look one year into the future, would you?

For Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry, the answer is unequivocally yes. And they’re betting everything that you’ll say yes, too. Welcome to The Future: a computer that connects to the internet one year from now, so you can see who you’ll be dating, where you’ll be working, even whether or not you’ll be alive in the year to come. By forming a startup to deliver this revolutionary technology to the world, Ben and Adhi have made their wildest, most impossible dream a reality. Once Silicon Valley outsiders, they’re now its hottest commodity.

The device can predict everything perfectly—from stock market spikes and sports scores to political scandals and corporate takeovers—allowing them to chase down success and fame while staying one step ahead of the competition. But the future their device foretells is not the bright one they imagined.

Ambition. Greed. Jealousy. And, perhaps, an apocalypse. The question is . . . can they stop it?

Told through emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, this bleeding-edge tech thriller chronicles the costs of innovation and asks how far you’d go to protect the ones you love—even from themselves.

My Thoughts:

I have seen the future. And it is narcissistic jackasses and emotionally stunted losers. This book was pushing the DNF line almost the entire time and I ended up reading it in one sitting so that I wouldn't DNF it. Why didn't I DNF it? Because I wanted to see the ending. And then I regretted that decision when I got there.

Both Ben and Adhi disgusted me to the core of my being. They adequately represented everything that I think is wrong in the world today and it was not one bit entertaining or fun to read about them. Personally, a good old fashioned apocalypse that killed them both, and millions and possibly billions like them, would be an acceptable solution to me. As characters they disgusted me that much. Not one shred of moral fibre was shown, not one tiny bit of backbone was revealed and Principles were jettisoned from the get-go. I actively disliked them the entire book. Even the ending where Adhi shows Ben a solution is so like him, he shoves all the responsibility onto Ben and it's pretty obvious from Ben's behavior in “the past” (which is the future) that we all know that the loop will continue. It was enough to make me want to use some profanity and tell them both to grow up and simply make ONE responsible decision in their entire lives.

The fact that Frey writes characters like these is reason enough for me to add him to my Authors to Avoid list. I don't want to spend time reading the words of somebody who can think this qualifies as entertainment. I'll give up fiction reading altogether before accepting something like that.

Read at your own risk.

★✬☆☆☆½

I have to compliment Dan Frey on writing a novel that I can read in the time it takes for me to enjoy one of Ted Chiang’s short stories. If only he could have written something that was as thought-provoking . . .

Not that his novel is necessarily terrible. The premise of “what if Silicon Valley invented a crystal ball” isn’t a bad one, even though it’s not especially original (I distinctly recall a movie starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman that came out a few years back that offered a similar scenario). And the ending isn’t the worst one Frey could have come up with, so there’s that.

The problem is that the novel doesn’t offer much beyond the core idea. Relating events through emails, texts and Congressional testimony is central to the plot, but it doesn’t allow for much in the way of character development. As a result, it’s hard to care about the people populating Frey’s novel. All that’s left is the story, and given from where Frey starts it doesn’t take a giant leap of imagination to work out where he ends it.

If you want to read a book about what happens when people are able to use technology to glimpse their futures pick up a copy of The Future of Us instead. It’s a far better example of what can be done with the idea, especially when it's paired with characters that actually engage the book’s readers.½

4.5/5 stars
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher.

I often find epistolary novels to be a bit hit or miss. Sometimes, they get too bogged down with exposition and never manage to coalesce into anything compelling. Other times, there’s not enough exposition, and the reader is left flailing about, trying to catch up with what’s going on. Modern epistolary novels have the additional problem of feeling gimmicky—Romeo and Juliet retold through text messages will always feel like a cash grab. These kinds of books walk a fine line between being enjoyable and unbearably kitschy. Luckily, The Future is Yours perfectly walks that line. It utilizes its various textual sources not as a gimmick but as a way of further exploring its themes. There’s a transcript of a congressional hearing that acts as a throughline for the book, allowing various congresspeople to interrogate Ben about the various potential ethical and societal issues that might come with using the technology his company’s created. There are news articles gathered from the novel’s future, elaborating on the societal reaction to the technology being widely available. What results is a book that doesn’t just feel like a gimmick. All of the in-universe sources feel grounded in the world Frey’s created. Each piece coalesces into a story that feels like it couldn’t have been told any other way.

A lot of praise should be directed towards how well Frey structures the book. It would have been very easy to overload the reader with too much exposition at the beginning of the book—like including an in-universe biography of the characters or something like that. But that’s not what Frey does here. Instead, we learn background information about the characters and the world as they become relevant. The plot is conveyed naturalistically through the characters’ communications—research reports handle explaining how the technology works, emails between the duo and their business partners explain how the business works, etc. The whole thing results in an experience unlike any other. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that someone has gathered all of these documents together and is presenting them in a way where each one builds off of the previous ones. For a book that’s about time travel, there’s a surprising amount of linear storytelling that happens. As you read the book, Frey lays out all of the information in such a way that you can kind of predict where the story is going—but not in a disappointing way. The book never feels derivative or too predictable. Instead, everything just feels fully developed and well-explored. The ideas explored within The Future is Yours aren’t ones that have been previously explored, which is why it is sometimes easy to see where things are going. But the way they’re explored in this book feels wholly unique and I was enthralled from beginning to end.

The book’s greatest strength is probably its characters—specifically how realistic they feel. From page one, Ben and Ahdi feel fully formed and three-dimensional. Naturally, much of this is due to great swaths of the book being comprised of communication between the two characters, in the form of emails and text messages and research reports written by one to the other. Through these writings, Frey expertly brings readers into the minds of these characters. We understand who they are, what they want, and why they want it. Their realness helps keep the book grounded, which helps the broader sci-fi elements land better. And the more we get to know the characters, the easier it is for us to guess what they’re going to do. Again, this ability to predict aspects of the story never feels disappointing. After all, the book is largely about the inevitability of the future and whether or not it can be changed. Frey simply explores his characters so well that it’s easy to understand their mindsets. And when you understand a character’s mindset, it can be easy to predict what they might do. And, honestly, there’s a lot of satisfaction to be had in making predictions that end up being correct. I adored getting to know these characters in such a deep way. For as much as the book is about the technology created by these two friends, it’s even more about their friendship—how it leads to this incredible invention and how that invention impacts their friendship.

Epistolary novels often feel very slow, bogged down by lengthy diary entries or letters. The lack of traditional prose in those novels ends up creating a more lethargic feeling. The Future is Yours, however, is comprised of a variety of sources, all of which are mostly short. This brevity helps establish the kind of faster pace that you might find in a prose-based novel. In all honesty, I didn’t find myself missing the prose at all. This isn’t the kind of story that needs a bunch of lengthy passages describing characters’ feelings, or exactly what a room looks like, or exactly what is happening in any given moment. Instead, Frey allows the various pieces of writing to establish all that needs establishing. The congressional hearings provide a narrative backbone, the emails and text messages provide the dialogue, the longer blog posts and news articles provide the backstory, etc. The variety of sources largely bridges the gap left by the lack of traditional prose and it’s amazing how none of this ends up resulting in a slow, boring book. I breezed through this book because Frey kept cutting between the various pieces of writing, interweaving between the various sources as needed. There are moments of exposition, moments of philosophical discussion, and moments of tension and excitement, but none of these outweigh each other. The Future is Yours is perfectly balanced, with pacing that could rival any of the best prose-based thrillers.

All in all, The Future is Yours is a fantastic read. It’s immediately captivating, holding the reader’s attention from its first page to its final one. The characters are fully-formed, with each of them possessing believable backstories and relationships that carefully unfold over the novel’s length. By writing an epistolary story, Frey invites his readers to feel like they are part of the book. Reading The Future is Yours is like getting to be in the world of the story. Readers get to read these documents and experience the book’s events from the vantage point of one living it. The ending is a little abrupt, though, and quite likely too ambiguous for many readers. But the rest of the book more than makes up for this. Plus, I’ll always prefer an open-ended ending in stories like this. At the end of the day, if you’re into near-future sci-fi thrillers, The Future is Yours is the book for you.

The Future Is Yours by Dan Frey is a highly recommended tech thriller that explores the realm of time travel and the relationship between two entrepreneurs.

Adhi Chaudry is by all accounts a genius (and on the spectrum) and Ben Boyce has been his best friend since college. Adhi has the theory that a quantum computer can be made that will see into the future. Ben believes in his friend and the two join together to create a startup to deliver the device, The Future. Adhi's job is to develop the technology, while Ben will hustle up the funding. And they do it. They create a prototype computer that can see one year into the future, and the future they glimpse looks bright. Ben is ready to be Silicon Valley's next tech billionaire, while Adhi begins to see changes in the future and becomes concerned.

The narrative in The Future Is Yours is told through written records, mainly a transcript of Ben's testimony before a congressional committee, but also text messages, emails, and blog posts. This epistolary technique works well in the novel as you need to read in-between the lines and infer what may be going on behind the scene that is not being shared. The sci-fi elements of being able to see one year in the future is very intriguing, but The Future Is Yours focuses more on the past and present relationship between the characters and the implications of the technology. (The concept of time travel paradoxes is introduced in a simple manner, especially the effect on free will as in Newcomb's paradox.)

The characters are developed through their own words and actions. It becomes clear that Ben is focused on the wealth and prestige he plans to amass from The Future. Adhi clearly has a conscious and begins to question the moral and personal implications of looking ahead a year in the future and how this alters individual actions and thoughts.

This is a fast read and will hold your attention throughout. The novel does focus more on the human aspect of the story and the relationship between Adhi and Ben rather than the science behind time travel, or in this case glimpsing information from the future. I was fascinated with the idea of seeing information from one year in the future, but also questioned the implications of this information and Adhi does do this even though The Future is his technological invention. Personally, I would have liked to see the paradoxes explored a little more. Ben is all about "show me the money" and becomes increasingly reprehensible as you see he will do anything to see that big payout. This makes The Future Is Yours an interesting psychological and moralistic study of the friendship between two very different men.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Random House Publishing Group.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2021/01/the-future-is-yours.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3800563489½

THE FUTURE IS YOURS, by Dan Frey, is about Ben, a charismatic leader, and Adhi, a brilliant introvert, who have been close friends since college. They start a company based on a theoretical paper Adhi wrote in grad school about looking into the future. They build a Prototype, find investors and start to experiment with how to look into the future and how to relate to the present when the future is already written. As the company matures and Ben and Adhi become wrapped up in what will happen, the question becomes: Is it a good thing to know the inevitable result of a choice that has yet to be made? Does know the future affect the present, or is the present just a reflection of future knowledge already obtained?
Frey makes a really unique and fitting style choice in the writing of this novel. Ben and Adhi use the Prototype to cultivate news from the future to inform them and Frey crafts the novel completely through a mix of news articles, interviews, and text messages conversations. This style reflects the way the information is obtained from the future, constantly reminding the reader that reading these blurbs of information consistently fail to paint the whole picture. But that challenge, to fill in the blanks on what is going on and how everyone feels, is exciting and entertaining for the reader to do. I really like the ethical and legal challenges that Frey poses, along with a smattering of betrayal, loyalty (or lack thereof) and humbleness that all come out of this ability to know before you know.
I really enjoyed THE FUTURE IS YOURS and I would recommend it to anyone. Its a fast and compelling read where the stakes get bigger and bigger until the breathtaking finale.
Thank you to Random House/Del Rey, Day Frey, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

The Future Is Yours by Dan Frey is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary. I found the concept of this book very intriguing and it opened up a lot of questions about what would happen if this was real. Those same questions are addressed in the book. The book is presented not in a novel format but as transcripts and notes. A unique way to tell the story but also the only flaw I found. It was a bit different to follow at times.
The story has two guys building a computer that could look into the future to exactly one year from the date. They want to market it. Government steps in. Friendships wobble. Very intriguing and imaginative! Trouble all the way!