Book info

• Title Limitless
• Author Alan Glynn
• Year 2001
• Genre Science Fiction

Imagine a drug that made your brain function with perfect efficiency, tapping into your deepest resources of creativity, intelligence and drive. A drug that can help you learn a foreign language in a day. A drug that can help you process information so fast you can see patterns in the stock market. Just as his life is fading into mediocrity, Eddie Spinola discovers such a pill: MDT-48, Viagra for the brain. But while the benefits of such a mind-drug quickly start to materialise, so too do the side-effects. And when Eddie tries to track down other users, to help him kick his addiction, he finds out that they're all dying, or dead...

Thoughts

I really enjoyed this book. Having seen the film, I was keen to read where the idea came from, and I was fascinated throughout to see where the differences were between book and screen.

There were quite a few differences, it felt like the book had a lot less open strands to take the story forward. I can understand why they would need the film to have more characters and a few more subplots, but I enjoyed it being focused on the main character alone.

The descriptions of the effects of the drug are amazing. In the film, they simply changed the colours on screen, but in the book there is no such luxury. Even so, it was so well written that it was easy to feel what Eddie was feeling, and I was still left feeling that I wanted some of the drug.

The ending was a lot different to the film, a little bit more moving, and certainly a lot less ambiguous. I was left feeling really sad for Eddie, but really happy at how the story had been complete from start to end.

Rating: 5 / 5