Terry Miles’ The Quiet Room – a sequel to his first novel, Rabbits – is a real mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s a rather thrilling mystery. One that dabbles in various conspiracy theories, quantum mechanics, and creepy ARG-style games. On the other hand, it suffers greatly from second-book-in-a-series syndrome. It’s often completely incomprehensible if you haven’t read the first book recently. And as the book goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that it’s merely setting up a future story rather than telling its own self-contained one. If you’re a big fan of the first book, there’s a lot here to like. But if you either never read the first book, or haven’t read it anytime recently, then The Quiet Room might prove a bit more challenging.
A Mystery That’s Both Thrilling and Frustrating
The Quiet Room follows Emily Connors, a longtime player of Rabbits – a mysterious game involving quantum mechanics, conspiracy theories, and multiple dimensions. As she awakes in an alternate dimension, she’s unable to find any proof of Rabbits’ existence. And every time she gets close to the game, she’s captured by an increasingly violent security force. Meanwhile, architect Roman Chess gets drawn into the world of Rabbits after the disappearance of his date signifies the beginning of the newest iteration of the game. But something’s afoot in this dimension, and it’s up to Emily and Roman to get to the bottom of it before things go fully topsy-turvy. If you’ve read the first Rabbits book, you know exactly what to expect here. A mind-bending mystery that’s as thrilling as it is frustrating. Once again, Miles pairs together the tropes of a traditional thriller with some very high-concept science fiction. Mercifully, the narrative itself plays out relatively linearly. It’s not a particularly difficult story to follow, provided you’ve read the first book recently enough to remember that book’s events. Without that prior knowledge, the first third of The Quiet Room is a bit of a slog to get through. It’s not that Miles doesn’t explain what’s going on or anything. The problem is just that everything is so complicated, and he doesn’t go into enough detail on the first book’s events, that every time he hints at those events, your eyes just kind of glaze over. There’s no real context for what he’s referring to unless you have a really good memory of that first book, so there’s a very palpable sense of needing to play catch-up.A Tense, Page-Turner of a Read
But once you get past the first third, you’re rewarded with a tense, fast-paced thriller. A compulsive page-turner in every sense of the word. And the best part about it is that, unlike Rabbits, the mystery this time around actually feels solvable. In The Quiet Room, there’s a force actively working against Rabbits, the game. And the game, itself, wants to take that force out of the picture. As the story goes on, it becomes increasingly obvious who or what that force is, and how they factor into the story. And there’s an immense amount of satisfaction once the book fully delves into what’s going on there. As far as specifics go, the less said about The Quiet Room‘s plot, the better. It’s the kind of story you want to experience as unspoiled as possible. After all, what fun is a mystery with its ending spoiled? That said, Miles once again spends a bit too much of the book trying to explain all of the weird science at play here instead of focusing more on the central mystery. These kinds of in-depth explanations of quantum theory just aren’t as interesting as a well-written mystery. Plus, the more you learn about how Rabbits works, the less interesting the game becomes. It was a big problem in the first Rabbits book, and it’s very much a problem here too A lot of the mystique in the first book is totally absent here as Miles overexplains the mechanics of the Rabbits universe. And honestly, those explanations just aren’t that interesting. They’re hard to follow and they needlessly remove a lot of the book’s ambiguities. And that’s a bit of a shame as the first book’s ambiguity is one of that book’s best aspects.Second-Book-In-A-Series Syndrome
On a similar note, The Quiet Room generally suffers from second-book-in-a-series syndrome. At no point does it feel like it’s telling its own story. Instead, it picks up on a variety of threads left over from the first book, taking those disparate elements and weaving them into the beginnings of a tapestry that will – presumably – be further explored in subsequent books. And sure, there’s nothing wrong with that approach. After all, every good trilogy (or tetralogy, etc.) needs a middle installment that helps lay the groundwork for the series’ ultimate conclusion. But The Quiet Room is just really blatant about it, especially in its latter third. There are a ton of new characters and mysteries, most of which don’t receive any kind of proper conclusion by the book’s end. There’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but it’s something to be aware of.Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, The Quiet Room is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s a tense, page-turner of a thriller filled with engaging characters and a truly captivating mystery. On the other hand, it’s a bit too heavily reliant on the reader being intimately familiar with the events of the series’ prior installment while also failing to tell its own self-contained story. As a middle installment in a series, it does everything it needs to do. But as a satisfying narrative in its own right, it falls flat. If you’re a big fan of the Rabbits podcast or the first book, there’s a lot here to enjoy. But if you’re new to this world, you’d be better served picking up that first book and seeing if it’s your cup of tea before diving into the mind-bending chaos that is The Quiet Room. The Quiet Room is available now in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats from Del Rey and Penguin Random House. DISCLAIMER: A review copy of The Quiet Room was provided by the publisher. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.
7.0
Terry Miles' "The Quiet Room" is a page-turner of a mystery that's as thrilling as it is frustrating. It relies a bit too much on the reader being intimately familiar with the first book in the series while also failing to tell its own self-contained story. A great middle chapter, but a bit frustrating as a standalone entry in the "Rabbits" series.
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GVN Rating 7
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