Rather like a joke where the teller approaches the punchline and then has to go back to amend some detail they’ve gotten wrong, David Ramirez’s debut novel The Forever Watch is a good story told by someone who doesn’t yet possess the skill to make it truly compelling. A forgotten holocaust has exiled the remainder of humanity onto a gigantic spaceship on a journey to a new world, technological advances enable people to make use of a staggering array of powers and abilities, and it is possible to record one’s thoughts not only to enable perfect recall but also for sale to others who may wish to vicariously experience an aspect of life beyond their means. Then it turns out there’s probably been a serial killer on the loose for quite some time even though no-one in this largely quiescent population has heard about it...maximum intrigue abounds. Except that, well, everything is so pale, so emotionally blank – something that seemed like an awesome narrative choice when our narrator starts the book on medication to suppress her feelings, but which it actually turns out is just how Ramirez writes. Violent crime scene? Ooo, that’s nasty. Staggering revelation? I am surprised. Fabulous sex (there’s a lot of just how great the sex is)? That was nice. And the fact that he sometimes goes on for a couple of pages disinterestedly conveying emotional responses that are really rather narratively obvious – I’m shocked, I’m angry, I’m amazed...I’m going to reel around in reaction to this for another 500 words – really doesn’t help. Sheri Tepper would do it in one-and-a-half sentences, probably while furthering the plot at the same time. In not being able to engage with this emotionally, the workings of the conspiracy in the second half – when the ulterior aspects of control come into sharper focus – just stand out as preposterous. When our heroine first posited a suggestion of what the evil scheme could be, I was hoping some comment on the nature of paranoia would be made by just how far off the mark she was going to be shown to be. Instead she’s actually spot on in every detail – deduced with no information at all – and it’s laugh out loud ridiculous even within the bounds of a serial-killer-on-a-generation-starship novel: you’re really not getting what the blurb is selling you, nor what the first half sets up. Some pulpy fun could have been had, and an opportunity has been missed – bringing to my mind the similar experience of Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief. A smattering of novel ideas isn’t quite enough to justify the inscrutably straight face this is played with, and there’s nothing to really prepare you for the direction it goes. I’ll give Ramirez another couple of books and then maybe try him again, but I’m in no rush to revisit his universe any time soon.