The Second Sleep

A novel

By: Robert Harris

Narrated by: Roy McMillan

From the internationally best-selling author of Fatherland and the Cicero Trilogy - a chilling and dark new thriller unlike anything Robert Harris has done before.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artifacts - coins, fragments of glass, human bones - which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death?

Fairfax becomes determined to discover the truth. Over the course of the next six days, everything he believes - about himself, his faith, and the history of his world - will be tested to destruction.

©2019 Robert Harris (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“It should be enough that Robert Harris, in his earlier books, makes the lives of Cicero and Caesar even more fascinating, and brings to vivid life the citizens of ancient Rome and 1930’s Munich. With The Second Sleep he cracks open The Time To Come, making his new book a barnburner, leaving the reader wanting only one thing: more, please.” (Tom Hanks)

“In the tradition of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Harris presents an extraordinary and terrifyingly plausible vision of a post-technological future, a novel that’s at once an adventure story and a meditation on truth and faith. You’ll never look at your iPhone in quite the same way again.” (Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven)

“Ingenious.... The historical thriller hinges on an apocalyptic event and induces a shiver of dread in our present times.... When Harris is at his best - and here he is - he writes with a skill and ingenuity that few other novelists can match. In this case, the usual page-turning pleasures are joined by something else: a sense that, through his historical-futuristic setting, Harris has found a unique vantage point to comment on the present.” (William Skidelsky, The Financial Times)

A wonderfully written cautionary tale

Robert Harris is one of my favorite authors. I can highly recommend his trilogy on the life of the Roman Senator Cicero as well as his dramatic telling of the last days of Pompeii. I did not expect him to write in this genre. I do not want to spoil any surprises and will only say it is a wonderful, creative, gripping story and quite believable.

Great concept, great writing, unsatisfying ending

I love Robert Harris. The premise of this book is brilliant, and the writing is enthralling, but I felt like the ending was far too abrupt and unsatisfying. It felt like the book was rushed to completion for a deadline. I don’t expect an ending with all the loose ends tied up, but this ending just felt far to abbreviated in relation to the pacing of the rest of the novel.

Interesting.

I liked it a lot. Reminded me a bit of Michael Crichton. Very Well narrated. Plot novel. Yes ending a bit unsatisfactory as others have pointed out but not terrible. And quite different to Robert Harris other work.

Thin

This was interesting enough as far as it went. it did require that you suspend disbelief regarding the nature of human behavior at several points, but some leeway is required, I suppose. Still, the ending was very abrupt and relied on a very weak plot device (death to all antagonists). Overall, I'd have preferred to spend both my money and my time on something more worthwhile. And note to Audible: suggesting other titles based on my having listened to this is not going to be a winning strategy!

Realistic and Tragic

Great character development. Great story, great imagery of opposing viewpoints and the real threat of power misalignment after a holocaust. Unfortunately, it was a long climb for a short slide of an ending.

The Audible description leaves out a salient point

Harris is a talented writer with a distinctive voice. His writing is great. Both Precipice and Conclave are five stars. Although the writing was stylistically great, there’s a whole post-apocalyptic, the-future-is-the-past aspect of the story never mentioned in the synopsis. It’s incredibly annoying and confusing and very inconsistent. Each time plastic was mentioned in the story, I thought I’d heard something wrong or missed a jump in the timeline. I finally became too frustrated to finish the book. Pick another title by this author, his stories are engaging. This one isn’t quite there.

Very disappointing ending

Story was pretty cool but we were waiting for some clever ending to see things up. Alas. Not so.

An interesting effort

I am a great admirer of Robert Harris. He is fast becoming the best novelist in the historical fiction genre. This novel is quite different from anything he’s written and not as successful; nevertheless, it’s a worthwhile and timely cautionary tale for our world today.

A VERY GOOD STORY! Well Written. Well Narrated.

I was compelled to read to the end because I could not predict how the story would wrap up, nor who would survive.

Post-apocalyptic story

If you like this genre, you’ll probably like this book. Narrator is quite good. Story, not so much. It follows the typical post-apocalyptic formula. The only thing that was somewhat unique was the reason behind the collapse of civilization as we know it. I don’t want to insert a spoiler into this review, and won’t discuss that reason.

I expected more from Robert Harris.