Expect Me Tomorrow
Adler Beck is a research climatologist from Norway in the latter part of the 19th century. He has a twin brother, Adolf, who sings professionally, and while they are identical in looks, have very different characters. They both have episodes when they seem to be in a temporary state of paralysis and hear odd voices in their heads, often at times of particular stress.
In a parallel strand, Chad and Gregory Ramsey are also twins, living in Britain in 2050, a country ravaged by climate change and political instability. Chad works for the police as a civilian psychologist profiler and is fitted with an advanced device that allows immediate communication with other users. While experimenting with this technology, Chad discovers that he can make contact with the past and contact his distant ancestors, the Beck twins in the 19th century.
The historical element of the story does not have a strong sense of the past; it is essentially a narrative that could be just as well set in contemporary times for the lack of attention to detail and the mostly absent flavour of historical ambiance or atmosphere. Oddly enough, it is the element of the story set in 2050 that seem the most plausible and seemingly authentic, possibly because Priest is a more practiced writer in the genre of dark fantasy and dystopian science fiction. There is one fairly substantial storyline in which Adler’s twin brother, known as Dolf, is imprisoned due to mistaken identity and suffers a long-running miscarriage of justice. While the story is interesting to follow, and according to the author’s bibliography, is based on actual events, it does not link in at all with the main narrative, acting like a standalone sub-plot while the reader waits to see how they will be reconciled.
