A number of pages into this I had a brief reservation when I
discovered that the protagonist was a lesbian. I’ve no problem with lesbians,
but I do have one with books that are right-on politically correct and might begin
preaching at me at any moment. However the relationships here weren't handled in a
preachy way, but as simply being an accepted part of the near
future, which of course they will be. And that’s science fiction at its best.
Later on I did have two ‘meh’ reactions to obligatory nods towards global
warming and the left-wing good right-wing mad school of thought. Both of these
could have been lost by the simple expedient of removing maybe a couple of
pages of unnecessary exposition.
And that leaves 300 pages of the good stuff.
Right now we’re in the midst of the smart drug revolution and
we’re also beginning to produce more than just text from our printers. Combine
those two and extrapolate and you get a chemjet printer, whereupon anyone with
a bit of nous can download a program and run up a few A4 sheets of LSD and much
more besides. But we’re producing more than drugs that make you high or
hallucinate because, after all, most designer drugs now are a side-product of
drug company research into curing our many ailments. Also, a drug once made
might find other uses beyond its design. Now imagine a drug aimed at one target
(schizophrenia) but whose larger effect in high dosages is something akin to
that produced by the God helmet.
Next set a couple of psychiatric patients on a quest to try
and stop this stuff getting on the streets, one of them an original developer
of the drug along with her personal angel, the other a special forces lunatic
with pattern recognition abilities that take her into the realm of paranoia. Toss
in some drug-dealing and corporate villains and a split-personality killer who
has wandered in from No Country for Old Men. Spice this with some uncomfortable
questions about belief that range from a Dawkins rant to a nod to Life of Pi,
along with hard neuroscience, and you a have a recipe for a good engrossing
read. What you get, in fact, is smart biological cyberpunk focusing on designer
drugs rather than AIs and virtual reality. I polished this off in two sessions over one
day, finishing at 1.00 in the morning.
Recommended.
Oh, and incidentally not yet available since this is an ARC. Should be out in April this year.
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