The acceleration of Earth’s spin begins gradually. At first, days are just a few seconds shorter than normal. Awareness of the mysterious phenomenon hasn’t reached Tanner, a young man preoccupied with dreams of escaping his tiny Alaskan hometown. One night, desperate to make his mark on the world, he runs away. He lands an unlikely job at CWC, the global operator of a network of massive aircraft that orbit the Earth at 30,000 feet, revolutionizing global transportation. Now goods and people can travel anywhere in little more than an hour–you can visit Paris for an evening or order sushi from Japan. But a wave of social unrest presents challenges for CWC just as Tanner settles into his new lifestyle and develops surprising feelings for one of his colleagues.

That unrest sweeps up Winnie. A high school outcast in an era of street protests, wild parties, and online savagery, Winnie falls in with a group of teen activists who blame CWC for the planet’s acceleration. As days on Earth quicken to twenty-three hours, then twenty, the sun rising and setting ever faster, causing violent storms and political meltdowns, Tanner and Winnie’s stories spiral closer together. They meet cynical executives toiling to forestall the crises they created and religious zealots for whom the apocalypse can’t come soon enough, lobbyists and lovers all coping in their own ways, and Victor Bickle–the self-aggrandizing TV scientist whose shameful secret will bind Tanner and Winnie’s fates . . . if they can uncover it before the Earth spins so fast that even gravity might lose its grip.

A propulsive exploration of capitalism, technology, and our place within a system that dwarfs us, Circular Motion is one of the most ingenious debut novels of our time.

I purchased a copy of this book for my own reading.

I decided to continue down the sci-fi rabbit hole for my third read of the year. Man’s need for ever faster global travel has lead to Earth’s rotation speeding up, and with it, days shortening. Circular Motion explores the impacts for business, social implications, and environmental factors as the humanity seeks a way to mitigate them without giving up on an interconnected world.

The premise was really interesting, that we’ve developed a means of travel that can see you reach any part of the planet in a matter of hours, creating a truly interconnected world. It does, however, come at a price – as vessels circumnavigate high above the Earth, they begin to increase its natural spin. This, in turn, shortens days, impacts humanity’s sleep cycles and starts to create environmental issues.

It’s told from the perspective of a collection of main characters, giving their stories throughout the ever worsening situation. Sadly, they didn’t really capture my imagination. As characters, I felt they just weren’t overly relatable or engaging. They weren’t overly interesting, and their stories, in my opinion, didn’t seem to add to the narrative. What started as a strong concept, left me feeling flat and disappointed by the end.

My rating: