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How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.
In a Nutshell: Scifi/dystopian novella
Kalan and her younger sister, Sett, live in a climate-changed world in which every minute of every day is a struggle to survive. Kalan spends her days scrubbing infected lichen from walls of buildings, trying to earn enough for her and Sett to sleep with a roof over their heads. Life is cheap...
The premise of this book is original, inventive and interesting, and the writing itself is intelligent and evocative. Some of the characterisation is great - namely Sett and a band of itinerant scavengers, the 'glow punks' - but at other times I felt it came second in the author's mind to describing the world he has created. Much of the world-building is delivered via an omniscient narrator, so it read like a newspaper article, or an introduction.
The dialogue is mostly sharp and convincing, except for sections of inner dialogue; rather than keeping Kalan and Sett's thoughts in the third person and writing them in 'deep point of view', the author has them talking to themselves, expressed in a rather clumsy first person.
To sum up, it's an unusual and most atmospheric story and has a lot going for it, and there is no doubt that the author has talent, but I think he would benefit from studying the craft of fiction writing in order to learn more effective methods of putting his story across. It is his debut; he clearly has much potential still to be realised.
Thank you Terry.
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