The Sleepless - Victor Manibo

Author: Victor Manibo

Genre: Sci-fi Mystery

Rating: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: I liked it. I didn’t love it. There are a few novel elements in this sci-fi thriller but the rest of the plot is somewhat standard.

Story Synopsis:

2043. After a pandemic, about two billion people in the world are now “The Sleepless”, staying awake for days on end with no ability/need to sleep. This creates a new class of people who function 24x7, working all hours of the day, earning more and spending more than regular people.

Jamie Vega, an investigative reporter with a media company, is one such Sleepless. When his boss Simon is found dead in his office apparently having killed himself, Jamie doesn’t buy it. He sets off looking into what might have led Simon to this end, thereby uncovering plenty of shady dealings and corporate politics. All the while, he is also battling another issue – his Sleeplessness has created an unexpected side-effect.

The story comes to us in the first person pov of Jamie.

✔ I like the concept of the Sleepless. Rather than making this plot a typical cli-fi dystopian thriller, the author focusses instead on the impact of 24-hour-functional people on the planet. It delves into both pros and cons of being Sleepless.

❌ Because it is a novel concept, there’s a lot of time dedicated to establishing what Sleepless go through. It gets monotonous after a while.

✔ The futuristic world-building is great. Rather than making the 2043 lifestyle too outlandish, the author extrapolates from our current scientific developments and provides what might be the most realistic depiction of two decades later.

❌ A lot of time goes in explaining the tech and life of the future, especially in the first half. This kills the pacing.

✔ There is great rep in the book. Jamie Vega is a Filipino bisexual. His boss Simon is of Indian origin. There are other LGBTQ+ characters as well.

❌ While Jamie’s Filipino roots come out strongly through his family’s lifestyle and food habits (the author’s own Filipino background would have undoubtedly helped), Simon’s Indian background feels pretty vague and at times, poorly sketched. No Hindu funeral would be held in a temple, for instance. Also, Simon is a common name among Indian Christians, certainly not among Hindus.

✔ The book is tagged as a Sci-fi mystery. I’ve written about the sci-fi angle above. The mystery aspect is fairly convoluted with enough distractions to throw you off track.

❌ A great part of the book goes in establishing the mystery in the first half – lots of conversation, barely any action. The final section contains a lot of info-dumping to explain the mystery. The ending is quite sedate. I wasn’t blown away by the mystery part of the content, though I enjoyed the sci-fi parts.

✔ Jamie’s narration isn’t as rambling as first person povs usually are. His observation is more practical than emotional. While he is an unreliable narrator to a certain extent, the cause of this is explained very well in the plot, and it has nothing to do with alcohol or drug overuse. In other words, he isn’t as irritating as first-person characters in thrillers often are.

❌ Because we hear from Jamie, we hear a lot about his past as well as his present. The timeline isn’t linear but regularly goes into flashbacks. The pacing gets affected because of all the forays into Jamie’s backstory, which gets quite extended attention.

✔ At the surface level, the book appears to cover a lot of themes – the impact of the Sleepless on world resources, political and corporate profiteering methods, widespread drug abuse without guilt over usage, mental health issues, suicide, and grief handling. Most of these are done fair justice to.

❌ If you dig deep, you will see that it is just another story with an investigative journalist digging into a covered-up murder and finding out more on his own than the police forces can. It’s just the dystopian+futuristic combination that adds the novelty.

The audiobook experience:

The audiobook, clocking at almost 13 hrs, is narrated by Joel de la Fuente. He handles the reading very well and does justice to the story. Those who are comfortable with audiobooks will certainly enjoy this audio version. Can’t recommend it to audio newbies as they might get confused with the changing timelines.

All in all, there are enough reasons to enjoy this #OwnVoices sci-fi mystery, but I expected to love it a lot more. If you are looking for an unusual thriller set around the intriguing concept of “Sleepless” people, please do give this a try. For a debut work, it is quite ambitious and hits enough targets to keep you entertained.

My thanks to RB Media and NetGalley for the ALC of “The Sleepless”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.