Review: The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Audiobook narrated by Susan Duerden
Publisher: Hatchette Audio
Science Fiction
Purchased from Audible

Synopsis

Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies. With her memory gone, her only hope of survival is to trust the instructions left in her pocket by her former self. She quickly learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in a secret agency that protects the world from supernatural threats. But there is a mole inside the organization and this person wants her dead.

As Myfanwy battles to save herself, she encounters a person with four bodies, a woman who can enter her dreams, children transformed into deadly fighters, and an unimaginably vast conspiracy. Suspenseful and hilarious, THE ROOK is an outrageously inventive debut for readers who like their espionage with a dollop of purple slime.

Have you ever wondered what you would get if you took Men In Black, The X-Men and MI-5/Spooks and mashed them all together? Then Daniel O'Malley's The Rook is the book for you. O'Malley created a world where occasionally people are born with special skills, such as one person's consciousness sharing four bodies, or the ability to don a protective skin. These people are trained to use or control their abilities, and a secret agency (The Chequy) helps to control and end any hazardous threats that may be caused by people with unique abilities. The world is a blend of your favorite espionage stories with your favorite science fiction tales.

Myfanwy is one of these people with special abilities, but we learn things at the same time as Myfanwy, who recovers her past through a series of notes and letters left by herself, before she lost her memory. The result is being dropped into the middle of the action, however I found some of the letter chapters a little slower than the present. By the middle of the novel, the use of the letters drops of dramatically and the pace really picks up.

I really enjoyed entering this world O'Malley created in The Rook and would love to read or see more set in this world.