The Looking Glass Club Reviewed
It was written by an Imperial Alumnus, but is it any good?
‘The Looking Glass Club’ tells the story of a rather elusive Union society – a society without a stall at the Freshers’ fair anyway; a society which convenes in a dark and dank room somewhere underneath South Kensington, accessible only through a secret tunnel with the membership list kept a closely guarded secret. It is the story of Zeke, an otherwise normal Physics student, that is until he was approached and befriended by a PhD student; in the midst of developing a, to put it lightly, mind altering drug, who persuaded him to come along to a club meeting.
The book switches from Zeke’s student days and the club set in the familiar background of South Kensington to Manhattan and the present day future – full of scary robotic nurses, the Freedom Tower and some truly mystifying hospital scan results.
‘The Looking Glass Club’ is a fast paced, sometimes funny, sometimes scary and overall thoroughly addictive new book. Full of mystery and intrigue the book maintains its balance on the thin line between being unpredictable and ridiculous – from the pregnant stranger with amnesia to the talking dog with a new found religion. There is a fantastic mix of philosophical and physics theory and ideas interweaved with a truly gripping story line, as well as some bizarre advances in technology. The plot is complicated but works – don’t ask me how, but Davies manages to keep a track on two interweaving storylines, theories, puzzles and characters and come out with a, dare I say it, brilliant Sci-Fi thriller. There are hints sometimes of a story run amok and a well thumbed thesaurus, but these, I assure you, are only brief patches in an otherwise great book which could very easily translate brilliantly to film.
At the end of each chapter are puzzles taken from the notebook of a former member of the club – puzzles which took almost a year for Davies to compile and are almost unique in their form but translate to the same thing – an image. Davies is offering a prize of up to £1,000,000 to the clever beast that can solve them all. But, if like me, a basic Sudoku is more your cup of tea the book is still worth a read anyway – it is easy to be put off by the science and complicated ideas within the book but the book is accessible from several levels – with several readers commenting that they have read it several times in quick succession and are still discovering new and exciting things about it.
Published by Sencillo, available in the Union Shop.
