As a lifelong admirer of science fiction and dystopian tales, I’m always hunting for novels that mix sleek world-building with moral unease. Justin Cronin’s The Ferryman (published 2 May 2023) promises a pristine island utopia—and then pries it open to reveal what it costs to keep paradise intact. Here’s my spoiler-light take.
The Ferryman by Justin Cronin: Utopia, Dark Secrets
Justin Cronin’s 2023 standalone transports us to Prospera, a sunlit archipelago that has seemingly solved scarcity, suffering, and decay. Citizens live long, comfortable lives, attended by courteous technology and an invisible tide of labour that keeps everything immaculate. When their time comes, they’re gently escorted by a “ferryman” to a serene retirement on a far-off island—rebirth promised, worries erased.
Our guide is Proctor Bennett, a consummate professional whose job is to shepherd the elderly through this final transition. He believes in the system, until hairline cracks—strange dreams, a botched assignment, a whispered protest—begin to spider across the glass. The Annex, home to the workers who prop up paradise, seethes with rumours that the official story doesn’t quite hold. In that friction, Cronin tightens the screws.
What follows is a layered unravelling of identity, memory, and consent. If utopia demands forgetting, is it still a moral good? Who gets to live well—and who pays the maintenance fees of perfection? Cronin’s pacing alternates between the contemplative and the breathless, and the mysteries are less about puzzle-box cleverness than the discomfort of asking whether a beautiful lie can be kinder than a messy truth.
Review: The Ferryman by Justin Cronin — quote & 🍵 rating
As a reader who devours speculative fiction, I loved how The Ferryman marries the glossy surfaces of a techno-eden with the melancholic ache of characters awakening to what’s missing. Cronin’s prose is assured, occasionally lush, but never indulgent; he sketches ports, plazas, and sunlit verandas with painterly ease, then undermines them with a single off-note in a conversation or a dream you can’t quite shake.
Favourite line (spoiler-safe, paraphrased): “We are more than the stories they let us remember.” That sentence captures the book’s heartbeat—how curated narratives can become cages, and how reclaiming memory is an act of rebellion. My rating: 4.5/5 🍵. It’s a heady blend of page-turning intrigue and philosophical bite, with only a couple of pacing wobbles in the late-game reveals.
If you enjoy Black Mirror’s moral puzzles, Kazuo Ishiguro’s quiet dread, or the speculative elegance of Emily St. John Mandel, this will be right in your wheelhouse. The Ferryman turns a pristine resort brochure into an ethical mirror, asking you to decide whether comfort without choice is truly a life well lived. I closed the book both satisfied and unsettled—the best possible outcome for this kind of story.
The Ferryman is the sort of dystopian-adjacent novel that lingers: a gleaming skyline reflected in water that looks calm until you notice the current. Released on 2 May 2023, it’s a sharp, humane examination of memory, control, and the costs of paradise. Brew a pot, settle in, and let Cronin ferry you somewhere bright—and then, brilliantly, somewhere darker.