Written by Christopher Hawkins, I CONTAIN MULTITUDES is an example of faultless storytelling. Nowhere in this breathless, fast-paced sci-fi thriller is there anything to be improved upon; every plot point, every beat is perfectly placed. Writing of this caliber is extremely hard to find.
The premise is a variation on the “travel between parallel universes” trope of the sort that recently came to the attention of the general public through movies like Avengers: Endgame and Everything Everywhere All At Once. But as sci-fi fans will know, it’s been around for decades. Trina Bell finds herself flitting between realities through a mechanism she calls “the Turning”—an abrupt switch from one place to another; here a universe in which airships are the norm, there a world where taxicabs take to the skies—after which no-one knows her or remembers her. When she “turns” during a conversation with a stranger named Colin—who remembers talking with her in the new reality—she spots a chance to discover what is happening to her, keeping on the run from non-corporeal “Shadows” all the while.
The novel therefore plays an old tune, but how brilliantly it is played. Because her reality is endlessly malleable, the reader is never sure if a detail that seems incongruous is indicative of a Turning having taken place or not. Hawkins takes this premise and runs with it. Is her new companion Colin Wilson, or Colin Williams? Does Edie—or Evangeline—really not remember Trina? Is she the same person Trina met in a strange Victorian-like reality, or not? As the novel effortlessly segues from one subgenre to another—here steampunk, there military sci-fi—one discerns a luscious, almost cinematic quality to Hawkins’s writing. His plotting, too: not a single word is wasted, not a single scene drags. Looming over it all is a single, unanswered question: who is doing this to Trina? Is it the work of the malevolent Shadows, or is she doing it to herself, subconsciously—perhaps due to an unwanted inheritance from her grandfather? Most satisfyingly, I CONTAIN MULTITUDES sticks the landing with a conclusion that’s as satisfying as it is accomplished. Rarely has this reviewer read science fiction told with such verve.
Christopher Hawkins’s I CONTAIN MULTITUDES is a suspenseful and brilliantly realized variation on the concept of visiting parallel universes.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader