Idle Hands – The Factory Trilogy #2 – Tom Fletcher

Desperate to cure his son Billy of the disease Idle Hands, Wild Alan must find a way back into the Pyramid from which he was exiled. But, trapped in the barren wasteland that is the Discard – the area surrounding the Pyramid – there isn’t much he can do alone.

Bloody Nora, the mapmaker, has her own reasons for wanting to get into the Pyramid; she believes that the secrets of Gleam’s history can be found in the Pyramid’s vaults. And she has worked with Wild Alan before.

There are more secrets there than either imagined: those vaults hold the key to destroying the Pyramid’s tyranny, but saving Billy and uniting the Discard against the Pyramidders is going to be far from straightforward.

Review:

I was super excited to start Idle Hands after absolutely loving Gleam, the first book in The Factory Trilogy. This is the second book in a series so beware of potential spoilers about the first book. If you haven’t read Gleam or haven’t heard about The Factory Trilogy yet, you can read my review of Gleam here. It’s definitely a must-read if you like weird and funky worlds with flawed characters and crazy creatures.

In Idle Hands we return to the huge factory world that is Gleam. Wild Alan is still in the Discard, that weird, chaotic place where survival is the main goal. Alan has a good reason for doing everything he can to stay alive: he has to save his son, Billy. If you’ve read Gleam, you know that Alan is not particularly known for his survival skills and the fact he’s gotten this far is mainly due to luck and other people’s skills. After days of stumbling through the Discard a starving Alan is caputred by a motorcycle gang. It’s here that the story really takes off again, with Alan finding a companion for his journey and the resources to start his rescue mission. Alan hasn’t changed much since the first book, he is still pretty selfish and very focused on his own needs. I have to admit though that Alan goes through a lot in this book and the way his character grows and evolves, especially towards the end of the book, was what was needed to push the story onwards. I really enjoyed seeing him overcome obstacles and slowly actually tuning in to his environment and the people around him.

The story takes us to some familiar places and brings back quite a few characters from the first book. But there’s plenty of new environments to discover and new creatures to marvel at/shiver from. Idle Hands masterfully escapes second-book syndrome by providing us with a new goal for Alan and lots of action, adventure and novelties. I like Bloody Nora, the Mapmaker, a lot. She’s just the kind of bad-ass woman Alan needs to keep him going. Her skills are also quite interesting. As the name suggests, she is skilled at finding her way and she is determined to break into the pyramid to get some maps that nobody has been able to lay eyes on for many, many years. This way she hopes to uncover some of the secrets of the Pyramid and maybe also of Gleam in general. She’s also a very skilled fighter, just the kind of person you’d want by your side on what is one of the most dangerous missions into the Pyramid.

The Pyramid works in a peculiar way. We know that they take blood from the people living inside, but we do not know for what purpose. The jobs the Pyramidders do are also all compartimentalised. Everyone works on small pieces of what seems to be an enormous puzzle, but nobody can know enough to actually put everything together to find out what is going on. I’m absolutely intrigued by the Pyramid and I’m glad we’re a little bit closer to finding out what is actually going on in there. I can’t wait to read more about it.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the book, so I’ll not say anything more. If you liked Gleam, you’ll really enjoy Idle Hands. It is such an interesting, weird, intriguing read I was literally glued to the pages. I hadn’t finished a book this quickly in a while, which means a lot. The story, though absolutely bonkers at times, flows so well and reads so quickly. I can’t wait for the third book, which will hopefully be released soon to continue on this journey with Alan and hopefully find out more about the Pyramid and its secrets.

Release date: July 27th, 2017
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Age Group: Adult
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review