Terry Hayes has made us wait long enough for a grand narrative after his enticing debut, I Am Pilgrim. I will say that Hayes has endeavored to bring something different to the thrillerverse with The Year of the Locust. It’s a fresh and exciting epic story told across waves of time and destiny that is nothing like what one might expect.
Kane is a weathered asset in the Denied Access Area department of the CIA that operates in the shadows to safeguard American interests across the globe by whatever means necessary. He’s trained to go up against all odds and come out alive. When he’s sent to a desolate region bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran to exfiltrate a source claiming to have vital information of a threat against the West, he is inexplicably tied to a showdown that will persist across time and all that we know to be possible.
The Year of the Locust is a prime example of Terry Hayes’ versatility in imagining and putting in words very different visuals of what a thriller can be. The narrative can’t be neatly categorized in just one bin for sub-thriller genres because it ripples across many. It kicks off with an espionage theme as we see Kane operating in enemy areas with his cool mission-impossible inspired weapons disguised as weathered equipment and before we know it, we’re entangled along with Kane on a personal calling that reaches out to him from beyond what we can comprehend, gelling philosophical conundrums with science-fiction elements on a race against time in more than just one way to stop a dangerous terrorist from unleashing a plague of biblical scale. Throughout all these developments, Hayes deftly drives the narrative with exciting twists and pushes Kane to his physical and psychological limits with cool bloody action and devastating consequences that hang in front of him if he fails in his mission. Normally there’s a disconnect when a narrative goes from grounded to fantastical but Hayes handles the jump masterfully and as a result, the story never loses its footing or heart.
The Year of the Locust was a decade in the making, but it was worth the wait. It has the ingredients of its predecessor, but with new spices ground deep into the bones of the book that make it just as memorable and awesome.
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