The Second Sleep, Robert Harris

Sent by his Bishop to officiate the funeral of a fellow cleric, Christopher Fairfax discovers a brewing heresy in the impoverished rural backwaters of southwest England. But, contrary to its seeming Dark Ages setting, this heresy involves the mysterious collapse of the unbelieving technological society that came before. His own interest piqued by the heresy, Fairfax quickly finds himself ensnared in an attempt to uncover forbidden knowledge from the past.

A surprising disappointment this one. Surprising because Harris has a knack of taking a high concept idea, and writing an efficient thriller around it. He's probably most famous for Fatherland, his alternative history novel in which a Nazi detective in a victorious Third Reich discovers the suppressed Holocaust. But I also rather liked his AI-infused The Fear Index, in which a hedge fund manager is out-foxed by the awakening of his algorithm.

Here, what seems like a solid gold starting point (especially now, given the pandemic) unravels as Harris fails to approach anything like a satisfying ending. Instead, the novel peters out in a rather incoherent climax that, it seemed to me, he tries to hide under the guise of Fairfax's incomprehension. The concluding revelations also fail to offer anything immediately relevant to Fairfax's world - contrary to the front cover blurb, "what if your future lies in the past?".

Overall, best just read A Canticle For Leibowitz and see how this high concept can be done properly.