Recursion by Blake Crouch
Published 2019 · 336 pages · 90,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Science Fiction, Thriller & Suspense
How hard is Recursion to read?
Recursion scores 24 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 25 out of 100
- Neuroscience terminology. Accessible in context.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- Memory manipulation as philosophical puzzle.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- Dense. Multiple timelines and accumulating consequences.
- Narrative indirection: 25 out of 100
- Recursive timeline structure. Multiple resets.
- Symbolic density: 20 out of 100
- Memory as identity. The chair as Pandora's box.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Earnest. The stakes are existential.
- Resolution withholding: 22 out of 100
- Each reset raises stakes. Resolution requires sacrifice.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- Recursive loops. Dual protagonists. Timelines compound.
How Recursion is regarded
Recursion holds a literary regard score of 30 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.