Tourist by Lucas Bantner is available at Amazon and Barnes & NobleI’m not going to call “Tourist” by Lucas Bantner a page-turner. And why not? Because I think the term “page-turner” is widely overused, and one man’s page-turner might be another’s road to the sudden onset of narcolepsy. Books, like how you take your coffee, are very much a matter of personal taste.
Did I like “Tourist”? No – I loved it! I’m going to call it an “addictive scroll-inducer” because I read it on my laptop, and I found it nearly impossible to stop scrolling down once I began reading it. There were dozens of things I should have been doing but all I wanted to do was find out what would happen to Ian, Bantner’s main character, next. At times, Bantner made me quite mad for putting Ian through so much, which I suspect might have been his intention.
Bantner says, “I find an almost unethical amount of pleasure in making up technology that is based on enough facts that it could, in some way, be considered almost feasible, but at the same time is completely outlandish.” In my opinion, he does exactly that with ease in “Tourist”. He makes the outlandish seem feasible.
“Tourist” is not an easy read, polite, or suitable for a young reader. It is acerbic, violent, thoroughly gripping, and nothing short of brilliant.
