When the narrative really gets going, it moves with suspense and well-coordinated attention. The pacing slows during sections in which Will attempts to deal with his knowledge, but these are mostly present in the first two acts. The story maintains momentum as people around the globe first react to the Oracle with wonder, and then fear and anger. And herein is Soule’s greatest victory: The riots for and against the Oracle, the government operations, the religious sermons and the attempts to prove the predictions wrong all feel grounded and born out of a fully aware, digital world. Soule, a well-loved comic book writer of Daredevil, She-Hulk and Star Wars, has delivered a realistic meditation on the consequences of being different
The Oracle Year raises many questions, but adds constant twists of plot. Where did those predictions come from? Were they sent by a genie? Or a demon? If you’re told what you’re going to do in advance, can you just refuse to do it? If it happens anyway, are we looking at providence? Someone, or something, must have had a plan.
In Soule’s latest writing adventure, Will Dando is an average guitar player in New York—struggling to get by, occasionally assisted by friends—until he wakes from a dream with 108 predictions about the future in his head ... Will and his friends struggle to unscramble the pattern to the prophecies, including a few cryptic ones, while they attempt to evade an assassin grandmother, and the entire world panics about a warlord with a nuclear missile. Soule’s background in comics shows in this dark, rollicking tale.
The Oracle Year, Charles Soule's debut novel, starts with an incredibly promising premise and, for the most part, that promise is borne out in the rest of the narrative ... There may simply be too many characters for viewers to get invested in (e.g.,Will, Hamza, Miko, and eventually Leigh), and even those characters seem sketched-out at best ... The effectiveness of the jumping-around, intertwined narrative style also rests on the complexity and finesse each section is given, and there's a lot of variation in quality ... The Oracle Year feels almost like an omnibus collection of volumes of a comic book series... But in a work of fiction that's meant to flow together cohesively, the continued pattern of dramatic cliffhanger leading to a plot twist or bombshell reveal gets a little wearying after a while.
This is Soule’s debut novel, although he’s spent years writing some of the most popular superhero characters for Marvel, DC, Image, and more. Here, he uses his keen eye to create a whip-smart thriller that employs the tiniest bit of speculative fiction, spinning an entertaining, keenly satirical tale about behavior and causality ... Soule finesses Will’s dilemma with a Byzantine plot in which Will and his companions can’t tell if the prophecies are coalescing into a dangerous endgame or their very lives are being manipulated by the arc of the predictions. A thrilling, noodle-bending adventure that keeps readers guessing until the very end.
Although the premise is a bit shaky, the relentless pacing, richly developed characters, and brilliant ending make this apocalyptic speculative thriller an undeniable page-turner.
