The Merge is a psychological horror novel with a cosmic twist, sprinkled with real astrological practices. At least, that’s what their blurb says. It follows the story of Jarvis, a PhD student who is overworked, struggling with rising debt and has medical issues.
I’ll be honest, I found the book unpolished but with potential. It feels like the book is too short for the amount of content Neo is trying to push into it. We travel very quickly through a number of odd incidents, none of which are even vaguely plausible. It is on purpose and does resolve tidily at the end but reading it, I felt frustrated with far-fetched event after far-fetched event. There’s no ebb and flow and the story doesn’t really build. It starts plausible, becomes weird, continues with the same amount of weird, ends.
To illustrate, let’s start with Jarvis as a character. He doesn’t eat because of ‘allergies’ and somehow manages to survive on a diet of water throughout the whole book. At one point, he buys carrot cake which contains a number of allergens. He then throws it in the bin.. while being swamped in debt. The guy is constantly spending despite not being able to pay his bills. It doesn’t quite follow through logically that he’s skipping meals to save money while also paying for unnecessary hotels and impulse purchasing cake he can’t eat. He’s an educated guy who’s portrayed as money conscious, his actions don’t match what the author is telling us.
This guy also goes along with everything. No resistance, just a total ‘yes’ man until a key point in the narrative where he does a full 180 for about 10 pages before flipping right back. The growth of the character is non-existent and his only refusal to go along with things feels disingenuous, like it’s been thrown in as a mandatory conflict because the plot needed one. The first death also feel like a leap. Somehow, Jarvis psychically knows he’s poisoned someone accidentally because the guy is dead a few minutes after receiving a gift. In the real world, if that happened I would be like ‘poor guy’ and continue with my day.. because I know I didn’t poison them. That paranoia is part of the character but he’s right about it all. Throw in some nonsense that he’s wrong about, keep us guessing!
As for astrological practices, somewhere around the 80% mark they finally appear. The cosmic twist is fine and I really like it as an idea. The astrology feels out of place. Either it needs threading in better or dropping completely. There were mentions of horoscopes but not really in any depth. Despite this, I love the astrologer character who I’d have appreciated more time with. She’s fascinating and the only strong female character.
This all sounds far more negative than I intended it to be because the book isn’t awful. It has a great premise and the imagery throughout is excellent. The characterisation of the minor characters is great, especially the university staff. The plot is well drawn and the different threads converge to a neat point. It reads more like a short story rather than a novel though and this is the main downfall. Fleshed out, this could have been rated an A.
For a debut, it’s not a bad effort. If you like more absurdist and occult, this could be right up your alley. With my editor hat on, I think this could have used 2-3 more drafts and extended to a more usual 300 pages, for a fully rounded book.
| Criteria | Scores | Our Score |
| Artistic Achievement | 1 – 5 | 3 |
| Pacing | 1 – 5 | 2 |
| Characters | 1 – 5 | 3 |
| Writing Style | 1 – 5 | 4 |
| Originality | 1 – 5 | 5 |
Written By: ivetafox
Favourite Game – Long Live the Queen || Favourite Film – Sweeney Todd || Favourite Book – Wuthering Heights
About: Ivy is a disabled, autistic writer from the UK, passionate about inclusive gaming. When not reviewing, she can be found writing short stories and micro fiction or reading the latest gothic novel.
Donate: https://ko-fi.com/storiesbyivy
Discover more from Pending Plays
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
