The Endless Vessel: A Novel

Written by Charles Soule

Narrated by Barrie Kreinik

Combining the wonder of The Midnight Library , the inventiveness of Ready Player One, and the artistry of Cloud Atlas, this novel by the bestselling author of The Oracle Year and Anyone explores the way we’re all connected—and what can happen when we lose our capacity for joy.   

A few years from now, in a world similar to ours, there exists a sort of “depression plague” that people refer to simply as “The Grey.” No one can predict whom it will afflict, or how, but once infected, there’s no coming back.  

A young Hong Kong based scientist, Lily Barnes, is trying to maintain her inner light in an increasingly dark world. The human race is dwindling, and people fighting to push forward are increasingly rare. One day, Lily comes across something that seems to be addressing her directly, calling to her, asking her to follow a path to whatever lies at its end. Is this the Endless Vessel to happiness? She leaves her life behind and sets out through time and space to find out. 

From its opening heart-stopping scene in the present day at the Louvre in Paris, through the earthly meetings between Lily and her loved ones past and present, to a shocking and satisfying conclusion in a truly enchanted forest, Charles Soule has channeled history, science and drama to create a story for the ages—a story of hope and love and possibility. This is a novel you will not soon forget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9780063043077

Charles Soule

Charles Soule is a New York Times-bestselling, Brooklyn-based comic book writer, musician, and attorney. He is best known for writing Daredevil, She-Hulk, Death of Wolverine and various Star Wars comics from Marvel Comics, as well as his creator-owned series Curse Words from Image Comics and the award-winning political sci-fi epic Letter 44 from Oni Press.

[Cristina · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book had me philosophically pondering what makes a good life. The prose is also beautiful.

[marissa2fallon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I will definitely be reading more by this author. A unique sci-fi novel with a lot of great philosophical thoughts.

[keithchaffee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Soule is doing a lot here, juggling ambitious plotlines and big ideas.

In the very near future, the world is suffering a pandemic. The Grey is a deep depression. Most of its victims fall into a state of apathy and inactivity; a smaller number become suicidal.

A relative handful are afflicted with the Joy variant, and become enthusiastic activists for the destruction of society as we know it. The world is ending, they argue, and we need to take whatever pleasure we can from the present moment without being distracted by the relics of the past. They go so far as to commit acts of terrorism to destroy those relics -- museums, music studios, theaters -- hoping to force people to accept that humanity as we had known it is no more.

Against that backdrop, Lily Barnes is working to create a carbon scrubber that will clean the atmosphere and help to end the climate crisis. Her boss shows her a prototype scrubber he's been given, which is so far advanced that she can't begin to understand how it works. Deep within its wiring, she finds a distinctive pattern of twists and coils that she recognizes as a signature of her father, who has been dead for fifteen years.

And in the late eighteenth century, Molly Calder converts her textile mill into an institute for researchers in a variety of unusual, often disreputable fields, hoping to find some way to bring her late husband back to her.

As each of these threads plays out, Soule crams so much into the novel that ideas will go flying by that you'd like to see given more attention, fleeting thoughts that deserve their own stories and novels. The place where all of his plotlines finally come together, for instance, is called The Haunted Forest, and it's a remarkable creation, a place with implications that are joyful and creepy and awe-inspiring.

I was not entirely convinced by the ending, which solves too many enormous problems with facile "love one another" platitudes. But the journey to that ending is an entertaining one. The story moves briskly along; the main characters are well drawn and the supporting players are colorfully sketched; and if some of Soule's ideas skip by too quickly, at least they are interesting ideas that leave you with something to think about as they whoosh past. The greatest sin of the novel is that it is overly ambitious, and when most things work as well as they do here, that's a sin I'm willing to forgive.

[brianinbuffalo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

As a fan of dystopian tales, I was surprised how much I disliked this book. The premise was intriguing and the opus began on firm footing, but I simply lost interest by the halfway mark. I agree with some armchair critics who suggest the narrative is “all over the place.” I couldn’t connect with the characters, and even by overly-flexible sci-fi standards, the twists were simply too fantastical — and not in a rewarding way. One of the promotional blurbs compares this work with "Midnight Library." Not even remotely close.