Review: Liner by Chris Coppel

It’s 1960-ish and strange things are happening on the luxury cruise ship Oceanis. David and Diana – two passengers who’ve been enjoying a nice flirtation with each other – find themselves trying to unravel the mystery of disappearing staff and ship-wide hallucinations. In fact, they seem to be the only ones even remotely concerned at all.

I have to start with a disclaimer: I am all about the character-driven novel, which may have influenced my impression of the book.

Liner, by Chris Coppel, is a plot-driven, supernatural (ish?) mystery that primarily follows David as he stumbles across some odd goings-on among the ship’s staff. Pretty early on, I suspected I knew what was happening, and by the halfway point, I had no doubts about it.

Still, this isn’t necessarily a criticism - or entirely a criticism. At times it was an effective trope - very much like watching a character in a horror movie do something we absolutely know they shouldn’t be doing - but other times it dragged down the narrative. At various points, I got frustrated because the characters seemed to be dithering about for no reason rather than asking the one very obvious question.

That frustration, however, led me to contemplate what it actually would be like to be aboard the Oceanis, surrounded by the unexplainable.

As readers, when we pick up a novel, we’re already primed with certain expectations. You’ll pick up Liner already knowing more or less what you can expect. But if you didn’t?

If you boarded a luxury cruise liner with no other expectation than a pleasant week of pampering, would it occur to you to suggest the absolute least expected scenario as a solution?

In David’s situation, I can see myself making a facetious joke about what was happening, but I don’t know that I would really believe it seriously, despite spending all my time immersed (ha) in fiction where the unexplainable is status quo.

Still, at the end of the book, I felt like I’d missed a chunk of the story or that something had happened that I just didn’t get, which left me with mixed feelings on the book as a whole. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it.

If you’re a fan of plot-driven fiction, old-school Twilight Zone, and are headed out to sea - make sure you grab a copy to take with you.