THE ARCHITECT OF GRAYLAND by Evelyn Arvey #RBRT

 4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link)
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.

In a Nutshell: SciFi fantasy; a kidnapping across time.

A most curious book!  Long, at 500 pages, but interesting enough for me to keep turning.  At no time did I think it could have been cut down, as one often finds with longer books

The plot: Elaine wakes up in a world of grey.  There is nothing there at all, just acres of grey all around - she isn't even wearing any clothes, and she has no water to drink.  Worst of all, she has no memory of what came before.  Of who she is, where she is from, how she got to this place.  To survive, she must find ways to work with her environment to feed herself, keep warm, find others.

We soon discover that she has been kidnapped from the present and dumped into the distant future, into 'the Domain', by a historical anthropologist under pressure to produce an enthralling spectacle, that the habits of the 'primitive human' may be observed.  Not only is Elaine the subject of Professor Mirri's research, but the public are able to watch her story unfold.  Unbeknownst to Elaine (and others she meets later), she has become a celebrity amongst the viewers.  It brought to mind a futuristic version of the first series of the Big Brother House, when the contestants had no idea how popular the show had become, on the outside!

I did enjoy this book and it's a wonderfully original idea, unfolding slowly, though I was disappointed by the lack of resolution, for both myself and Elaine.  I still had so many unanswered questions when the book suddenly finished.  I needed to know how the subjects were extracted from present to future, how they were chosen, what year in the future we were looking at - thousands of years away, I imagine, because the humans had actually evolved physically in some rather alarming ways - the reveal of this was so well done and quite shocking.  However, I so wanted to know more about life itself in this strange time, whereabouts in the world Professor Mirri lived.  I wanted more information, generally; I am sure that the sparsity of such was an artistic choice that will work well for some, though I was frustrated by it - just a personal preference!