Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

All I can say about this book is that it is a mindblowing read! I usually tread far away from Grimdark stories (and one starring a Biochemist that cooks drugs for a volatile drug lord Breaking Bad style? Oh my!), but the way the story flows and envelops the reader makes you want to continue reading until the very end.

The prose veers into literary fiction in some scenes of the story, while also addressing themes of domestic abuse, disability, sex trafficking (of women and children), self mutilation, trauma, and trying to survive when all the odds are against you. I quite liked Solari as a protagonist who is still paying off the debt she owes to a mobster and trying to lay low in the hopes of gaining her freedom.

When hell comes loose and the mobster issues ridiculous demands that risk her life, Solari has to choose the least worst of two very bad options, and so she begins a story of self discovery thwarting the dangers of a gang infested Hobart, Tasmania, common criminals, dangerous animals of the wild jungles, terrible injuries she sustained that are getting infected, the truth about what really happened to her mother, and her own predjudices.

There's tons of themes going on in this story that a reader could analyze in all sorts of different ways, and maybe they will never truly understand the full scope of this highly ambitious book. I enjoyed every minute of the story, and salute the author for such a creative work that I will be reccomending readers for years to come.… (lisätietoja)

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *

In a grim future, Tasmania is a walled-off state separating the prosperous North from a lawless South beset by strange mutants arising from nuclear radiation. Solari is a biochemist on the run from a violent drug lord. In a desperate move to escape, she commits an act of self-mutilation in order to pass as a mutant and enter one of the secure enclaves where they live.

Things do not get much better for Solari, as she finds she in not so safe within the enclave either. She also learns that the mother she thought was dead is still alive, so she once again risks capture in order to head North and seek out her long-lost mother. She is accompanied in her flight by the mutant Alcaeus, who has been exuled from the enclave.

This book is a wildly imaginative tale which hearkens back to Tasmania's colonial past, when indigenous minorities were also persecuted and driven out. The criminal elements of the plot are firmly grounded in the drug and vice worlds of today and completely believable. The only aspects of Kopievsky's story that I could not accept where why Solari's human immune system did not immediately reject her self-mutilations, and just why she became so obsessed with tracking down a mother that she had barely ever seen, despite the enormous cost that this quest imposed on her and others.

If you can suspend your disbelief a bit more than I was able to, then this is a cracking story in the dystopian fantasy genre.… (lisätietoja)

A glossy, well-written tale that holds a lot of promise, which has grown on me the longer I've thought about it.

In a post-apocalyptic Paris that is almost but not quite unrecognisable, the Co-operative clings on by adhering to a strictly regulated society. Citizens are conditioned from birth to accept their lot; unorthodoxy is punished.

When Peacekeeper Anaiya is asked to go undercover to find the source of an outbreak of Heterodoxy, it means being reconditioned and losing her very self. Will she be able to cling to her mission or will her new nature lead her astray?

This is a well-executed dystopia with some intriguing world-building and clever use of prose (it's worth paying close attention to the use of language, which evolves as Anaiya changes). While it never quite won me over to caring about its characters, it did enough work to leave me curious about their future. I'm looking forward to future instalments.

Full review

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.… (lisätietoja)