My letter “R” pick for the A to Z Book Challenge was RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer. This book was a recommendation from a friend with the endorsement of this isn’t your usual sci-fi story. It most definitely is not.

The premise of Riverworld is this: Sir Richard Francis Burton, a prominent English explorer (look him up if you need to) dies and discovers the afterlife is not what he expected. He finds himself instead lying on the bank of an enormous river, bald, naked as the day he was born, and clutching a metal bowl attached to his wrist. Here is where it gets really fascinating. All humankind, even proto-humans, are reborn into Riverworld at about twenty-five years of age, regardless of how young or old they were at death. The metal bowl is known as a grail, and three times a day, objects known as grailstones dispense food, toiletries, and even things like cigarettes, alcohol, and hallucinogenic gum known as dream gum. Riverworld is a massive construction, and the river loops around the planet beginning and ending its loop at the north pole. There is no disease. no animals other than fish, a temperate climate everywhere, and a complete lack of metallic ore other than meteorites, which are incredibly rare.

In his travels along the river, Burton meets a wide variety of people, including several historical figures, the most entertaining and well fleshed-out being Mark Twain, who becomes an integral part of the story. There are hundreds of kingdoms and fiefdoms, power struggles, wars, and even slavery – forcing others to give their filled grails to their masters. The most expedient way to travel seems to be suicide, as it merely regurgitates you somewhere else along the river at random. There’s a limit, however, of 777 deaths before it happens for good.

The world building in this book was incredibly detailed and immersive, and the premise is so utterly unique it quickly drew me in. That being said, for every single human throughout recorded time inhabiting this world, Burton seems to run into more historical celebrities than seems credible. Also the mysterious “Ethicals” who created this mass experiment in humanity have very little presence in the book, and very few humans seem to have much curiosity about them. The story concentrated so much on the interactions of the human characters but I really wanted a good mix of that and reveals about the creation and purpose of this crazy, captivating world. There just wasn’t enough of that for me. This is book one of a series, so maybe the reveals come book-by-book, but the vagueness in this one left me wanting. I’m going three stars for a fantastic premise that meandered a bit too much.