The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man is a difficult book to classify and to review. The cover and blurb strongly indicate a superhero-type story, which is what attracted me to the work. However, the first 75% of the book is essentially a slow, tedious drama/mystery story. Then, without warning, the story does a complete flip and turns into something else entirely, dropping a number of characters and unresolved plot points and introducing others. The ending then also feels unresolved in the way it is left. There were bits towards the end of the book that I enjoyed, but I would have liked to have seen those introduced much earlier, because the snail-pace of the first 75% had already lost most of my interest and attention by that point. There is a spark of something in the premise, and I think it would have had potential if not for the pacing issues and the general disjointedness. I'm giving this 2.5 stars that I will round up to a three. There were some interesting moments, but overall the book's structure was too flawed for me to truly enjoy the tale.

Here's what I'd tell this author if I was his editor. Obviously, I'm not.

Your prose is well above average. That's what kept me reading through the very slow first quarter; I don't know that it would do as much for most readers. Your structure, on the other hand, needs a lot of work.

The first quarter consists entirely of a sad loser (one of my least favourite kinds of character, speaking for myself) resisting a decision that it's clear he will end up making. What's not clear is why he's resisting it. Is he fiercely independent and doesn't like being railroaded? If so, you need to show that more obviously, and also make it a trait that carries through into the rest of the book. Likewise if he's just self-sabotaging. I couldn't figure out which one it was, or if it was something else, and it never ended up mattering anyway.

The middle half is stronger, but at the three-quarter mark it takes a sharp left turn, and practically all the plot lines and characters that have been gradually developing through the middle are thrown away, never to be resolved. Your title promises, and the blurb hints, that this is a supers book. It isn't for the first three-quarters, and the last quarter is only a supers book if you're extremely generous with the definition. Then the ending is a complete damp fizzle.

Here's what I suggest you do. Cut two-thirds of the first 75%, including most of the first 25%. Get rid of all the plotlines that go nowhere and the characters that disappear at the three-quarter mark for no particular reason except that the book has suddenly changed what it's about. If possible, bring in at least two of the three new characters you introduce in the last quarter (the Polish scientist and the two government agents); don't introduce significant new characters after the first act if you can help it.

Develop the relationships with Wendy, the scientist from the early part, and if possible Rob Chen. They're underutilised. The relationship with Wendy doesn't have to be a romance (you briefly hint at the possibility, but never follow through), but it should be more than it is. Chen is a throwaway at the moment. You developed the relationship with Ralph, the old man next door, well; I want to see you do the same with other characters that last until the end of the book.

And definitely develop the relationship with the villain. Perhaps you could toss in the theory that the reason Alex and he were the only ones who were able to leave after the accident was that they were having a confrontation at the time; either the emotional heightening or the physical proximity could provide an explanation for what is, at the moment, unexplained. It's fine if that's just a theory that never gets confirmed, but humans come up with theories to explain things. At the moment, no explanation is even attempted. Have the scientists at least figure <i>something</i> out, and show us a bit of their process, and their personal process around the scientific process. That's your chance to give the female characters, particularly Wendy, more to do; at the moment, they're tokens. "Look, my book has women scientists! Two of them!" Yes, well, good for you, but they don't play that much role in the plot, especially not as scientists, and not as fully realised people either.

Instead of just having the agents tell Alex about the damage the villain's doing, have him go and see and feel the devastation it's causing for himself. Have him try to help the victims with his new powers, which are seriously underutilized; there's not even a suggestion that he should be considering the good he can do on a large scale. He barely does much on a small scale.

The whole new middle should be about him trying to come to terms with his new powers, trying to use them in a way that matters, hitting limitations, discovering that helping people isn't simple, opening out beyond his self-absorption, differentiating himself from the villain, and becoming more determined to stop the villain. Give me a reason to be emotionally invested. Lead up to the second confrontation with the villain, and make it the turning point of Act 3, not just an inconclusive thing that happened without much foreshadowing or emotional weight. Then show us how things resolve for the characters we've now come to care about. Not everything needs to wrap up in a neat bow, but <i>something</i> needs to resolve. At the moment, the ending is nothing. It has no thematic resonance (in part because the book is so disjointed), it has no sense of a plot coming to a conclusion, it's just a place where you stop writing. Everything has changed for Alex, but nothing has changed for him. Give him an internal journey to match his external one.

In the current version, the book Alex is writing never comes together and ends up just being lost, uncompleted. I assume that's not intended as a metaphor for this book, but it certainly could be.

If you wrote the book I describe above, or anything close to it, it could be a five-star book for me. You're a clever writer. You could make it not cliched, you could have things that are left unsettled, you could avoid turning it into a Hollywood cookie-cutter plot. Yes, it's more conventional than what you've done, but classics are classics because they work. As it stands, your version only makes it to three stars because of the quality of the prose; structurally and in terms of pacing, it doesn't work for me at all, and I think there are serious missteps. It's certainly not the "thrilling science fiction masterwork" that the blurb promises.

(I received a review copy via Netgalley.)

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy.

It pains me to give three stars to this, as I am such a big fan of Hutchinson's Fractured Europe Sequence, and have thoroughly enjoyed his other works as well.

I had two major problems with this:

Problem one - The pacing: It's called The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man. There's a picture of an incredible exploding man on the cover. You think the book would largely be about an incredible exploding man, right? No. The first 80% of the book is kind of a mystery story about an author exploring a town and its particle collider facility. This might work alright, except that 80% is really not that enjoyable to read. Partly because of..

Problem two - The writing: I've read six other books by this author and always felt his writing varied between pretty good and excellent. Here I started to notice sentence constructions that were used all the time. Almost every page had one or two exchanges of dialog that were prefaced by a level stare or a grin. It got very distracting. The characters were also not fleshed out particularly well, and some of the subplots just went.... nowhere.

Europe in Autumn worked so well because it had a well-written and interesting story about near-future espionage, and hits you with a sudden high-concept sci-fi curveball in the final act. This book seems to try to recapture that formula, except the story isn't well-written or particularly interesting, and the sci-fi curveball is prominently displayed in the title and on the cover.

Maybe if the title of the book had been The Arrival of the Pudgy and Awkward Science Writer the final act could have made this into a 3.5 or 4 star book, but the writing would still be holding it back.

It felt like this was 2 different books in 1. The first 75% was a simple fiction novel with character building and some science. And then came the last 25% of the story which was insane, incredible greatly insane.

Alex Dolan is a science journalist who has seen better days. Now he is in serious need of money so after some careful thinking he accepts the job offer of Stanoslaw Clayton who is the CEO of Clayton Dynamics. The job is to write a book about Sioux Crossing Supercollider. Clayton want to use the collider to research gravity. This was supposed to be an easy job but when something goes horribly wrong, Alex’s life turns upside down.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect after reading the book’s description but this was so not it. I liked Alex instantly, he is a smart, cocky guy.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and Dave Hutchinson for my copy.

Damn good science fiction that grabs and doesn't let go. The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man is an inventive and, yes, "incredible" read that entertains consistently. I want to read more from Dave Hutchinson.

To read this is to see an author maturing into his style. I've read most of the Kindle titles from Hutchinson and with this one he seems to have found his pace. He spends a lot of time creating characters and a place for them to live in and we don't really mind as readers that the book isn't science fiction until we hit the 55% mark. I do wish we had more foreshadowing of the end but I think he felt that would give it away. Honestly, I guessed what was going on at 10% but that didn't ruin it for me.

The last 20% took a sharp turn into all-SF, which was a strange turn after so much character-building. I liked the characters but it was almost like the first 80% was written to flesh out a short story that was the last 20%. (I don't really think that was the case.) What I hope is that the author intended to show the protagonist growing into the last 20% and how he handles it. This only works as a standalone novel for this reason and it needs to be intentional. If this turns out to be an origin story for a sequel, I will come back and lower my rating.

The nitpicker in me wishes he had researched American geography and climate a little. It is not hot in San Francisco and Wisconsin is not southeast of Iowa. He also makes the mistake of having American characters use British idiom (no one in Iowa says "bollocks"!). If the narrator is British, he can get away with it. The characters cannot.

Anyway, I zoomed right through and enjoyed it to the end. There were no slow parts, it was all well done, and I do recommend it.