Autonomous (Orbit, £8.99) is the debut novel from Annalee Newitz, a science journalist and co-founder of the SF website io9. It’s 2144 and in a hi-tech, down-at-heel US – a hybrid of Blade Runner and William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy – “Jack” Chen manufactures illegal drugs for the poor. She also pirates a drug known as Zacuity, designed to aid concentration. When she learns that it has lethal side-effects undisclosed by its makers, the Zaxy Corporation, Chen turns whistleblower and must flee the ruthless agents of the International Property Coalition. What could easily descend into a routine run-around chase caper is given moral and intellectual depth by Newitz’s examination of corporate behaviour and the limits of personal freedom. A grim dystopia which asks pertinent questions about the role of artificial intelligence and the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry, Autonomous is thrilling and stimulating.
After the terrible global conflict known as the climate wars, humankind has constructed a last redoubt: the floating city of Qaanaaq in the Arctic Circle. In Sam J Miller’s first novel for adults, Blackfish City (Orbit, £12.99), we follow the lives of a gay playboy suffering a debilitating mental disease, a brain-damaged fighter fallen on hard times, a well-off government administrator and a gender-neutral courier who works for the underworld. What links these well-drawn and disparate characters is the story of a woman who came to the city on the back of an orca, offering hope. Qaanaaq is vividly brought to life in all its squalid glory, and Miller excels at depicting a metropolis bursting at the seams and populated by both refugees and the elite. Blackfish City is a compelling dystopian thriller.
In The Wolf (Headline, £16.99), the ambitious first novel in the Under the Northern Sky series, Leo Carew depicts the island of Albion sundered by war between the Anakim, warrior-giants of the north, and the smaller Suthernors. When the Anakim’s revered leader is killed in battle, his son Roper must utilise all his scheming wiles to take his place – and it’s the convoluted political intrigue, as Roper retreats to his icy northern fastness and plots against usurpers in his own kingdom as well as against the invading warriors of the south, that Carew handles so well. Roper is at once clever and vulnerable, and touchingly aware of his own limitations and inexperience. It’s an absorbing study of one man’s rise to power, and something of a slow burner – imagine Game of Thrones rewritten by John le Carré – with some magnificent world-building (the northern Black Kingdom is graphically rendered in all its wintry bleakness). Featuring excellent anthropological observations of the opposing cultures of the Anakim and the Suthernors, and building inexorably towards its climactic battle, The Wolf is a marvellously accomplished debut.
“Mallory wouldn’t return to the bathroom because that’s where the dead man was …” Stephen Lloyd Jones’s fourth novel, The Silenced (Headline, £8.99), hits the ground running and never lets up. Mallory Grace has killed the assassin who came to kill her, but that’s only the start of her troubles: her pursuers will stop at nothing to see her dead, and the chase is on… Meanwhile, reclusive SF nerd and animal lover Obe Macintosh is mysteriously targeted by gunmen at an animal sanctuary at Land’s End. What follows, as Mallory and Obe meet up andare pursued across Europe by a fanatical death-cult called the Vasi, is an electrifying supernatural chiller that slowly reveals the reasons behind this merciless pursuit. Mallory is an Arayici, part of an ancient bloodline which has served as “an accelerator pedal for humanity’s development” for 80,000 years, and the Vasi are her mortal enemies, whose aim is to wipe out not only the Arayici but the entire human race. While The Silenced will win no prizes for prose-style or originality, it’s a gripping page-turner.
In The Tangled Lands (Head of Zeus, £18.99) by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S Buckell, the ancient city of Khaim is the last stronghold of a crumbling empire, and the city itself is under siege. The invader is not the marauding army familiar from so many fantasy epics, but a pernicious weed, a bramble that sprouts and takes irrevocable hold wherever magic is practised. The use of magic is forbidden on pain of death, a rule broken only by the very desperate and those wealthy enough to get away with it. Against this rich, intriguing background the authors have each written two novellas, charting the fates of a diverse cast in the dying city. The stand-out tales open and close the volume. In Bacigalupi’s “The Alchemist”, the eponymous old man runs the risk of death by using magic spells to save his dying daughter while inventing a device to kill the weed, with unforeseen and moving consequences. Buckell’s harrowing “The Blacksmith’s Daughter” depicts the plight of Sofija, who must fight injustice to save her parents. Exploring themes of power, corruption, greed and thwarted hope, the authors deliver an absorbing and sensitive fantasy.
• Eric Brown’s latest novel is Murder Takes a Turn (Severn House). To buy any of these titles go to guardianbookshop.com.
