The Sanctuary: the gripping must-read thriller by the Sunday Times bestselling author

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Ben meets many of the island’s inhabitants, learns many aspects of life there, and sees much that impresses him. However, doubt still lingers, especially due to the continuing silence and absence of Cara, and the island clearly has other mysteries which also worry him. As Pemberley’s long-term plan is obviously nearing completion, what will Ben learn? What will he do? And where is Cara??? Quite honestly a brilliant book which, like all the best dystopian fiction, makes us question our own world by showing us another world that is going slightly awry in ways not dissimilar to our own. Very many shades of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau and the classic movie Logan’s Run.

Murray is a writer and researcher for the BBC panel show QI, as a member of the team known as the " QI Elves". He co-hosts the spin-off podcast series No Such Thing as a Fish in which he and three other QI Elves – Anna Ptaszynski, James Harkin and Dan Schreiber – share their favourite facts from the week. Murray wrote and co-presented the podcast's spinoff television series No Such Thing as the News. He currently hosts " Drop us a line" as part of the Club Fish podcast. Superb writing but a disappointing twist 🙄 and climax and weak ending. It was almost one of the best books l've read this year but the last 20% wasn't as great. Interesting concept though. All told, a well written and pleasant read that takes its time to gently take you to where it is going. Part way through the first act of this explicitly three-act SF novel, I was finding things distinctly depressing. (But there's better news to come.) The first person protagonist, a portrait artist named Ben, lives in a low-key dystopian future for a country that is never explicitly identified, though is fairly obviously England. Cities are in decay, the economy seems to be pretty much non-existent and the only places that are pleasant to live in are Villages (with a capital V) - walled communities where old rich people are waited on hand on foot by the young poor.This was an addictive read and I loved the dystopian twist, this is a new genre for me and I fully lost myself in this book. Ben is a painter, he has been living with his fiancée Cara for ten years, she has recently been working for millionaire philanthropist John Pemberley at his remote island known as The Sanctuary. When Ben receives a letter from Cara saying she wants to stay on the island and is calling off their engagement Ben decides to travel to the island for answers. The Sanctuary has made a big splash in the reading world, and it’s clear to see why. As an imaginative dystopian thriller, Andrew Hunter Murray’s book has an incredibly enthralling premise and a good few mysteries that should keep a reader invested throughout their time with the story. Hunter-Murray is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. His writing style is articulate and educated, whilst remaining easy to read (and easy to lose yourself in).

Mind, my main criticism stems from the Richard Osman pull quote on the cover, which calls this a "thriller." This set up a certain expectation about content and especially pacing, which is where the novel let me down. Without that quote, there would have been no expectation and no confusion. But listen, that aside, I see what Murray is trying to do, the questions he's asking his reader to consider, and I respect it. I found this to be a slow read (but I enjoyed it none the less) up until Ben reaches the island, then it’s full steam ahead Overall, this was a book that held our attention and we did enjoy it. But, compared to other dystopian works we’ve reviewed such as Hanna Jameson’s The Last, it just didn’t strike the same sort of punch enough for us to say we ‘ loved’ this book.

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I live in London, in a small flat with large bookshelves, and I'm already working away on the next novel idea... Cards are played close to the chest and little is given away. We sense a growing need for Ben to act, but he does not seem immune to the spell of the great man. Our questions are, eventually, answered and we sense just how close Ben comes to a very different story. Outside novel-writing, I work for the TV show QI, as one of the 'Elves' finding out Quite Interesting facts about everything under the sun. I also co-host the podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, and write jokes and journalism for Private Eye, Britain's leading satirical magazine. No Such Thing As A Fish has also led to a spin-off TV series, No Such Thing As The News, and three books co-written with my colleagues on the show - the Book Of The Year 2017-19. Set in a near future UKesque landscape, the last elephant has died (thanx, mankind), and the world is heading more towards the toilet than we believe it to be these days. Society is becoming layered - the wealthy live in secure villages (created by a billionaire developer) where everything is put on, then further out are their upper level helpers (teachers, doctors, professionals), then further still are the blue collar and unskilled workers, all dependent upont the village though.