I would like to thank Kate from Rebellion for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Abaddon Books

Published – Out Now

Price - £8.99 paperback

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Yesterday, Amada Back’s life was flawless: the perfect social credit score, the perfect job, the perfect home.

Today, Amanda is a target, an enemy of the system holding information dangerous enough to disrupt the world’s all-consuming tech – a fugitive on the run.

But in a world where an unhackable blockchain links everyone and everything, there is nowhere to run.

It’s still amazing how much the microchip has changed our lives. Computers have gone from being just key components of industry and the space race to something we can use to control our lives and appliances.  We are connected in some ways more than ever; our lives decoded easily by just knowing our internet histories but at the same time people feel so isolated and remote from each other’s problems that we often feel hopeless and unable to do anything.  Apathy is the best drug for compliance. In Stewart Hotston’s fascinating futuristic thriller we see a world that’s fallen even a little further from our own and technology could further pull us apart or bring us together.

Amanda is just back from a business trip completing more lucrative work for her investment company when customs ask her to follow them and her life quickly falls apart. A mysterious agent threatens her unless she tells him what she has got. Her very ex-boyfriend Tangle who she last saw depart with all her cash to feed his drug addiction many years ago has sent her a memory stick plus a weird but helpful AI lurking in the fridge and heavy duty thugs knocking on her door.  The information on that memory stick could break through the greatest security in the world and reveal some very dark secrets that many don’t want shared. Amanda must cross Europe to find out what this stick holds and she is not a trained spy or revolutionary – she just wants her old life and credit rating back.

The thriller where the wrong person gets hold of a secret many want is a familiar ploy in thrillers. The fun of it is the chase and having an everyday character rather than a superspy having to work out what is going on and how to survive. Amanda is an intriguing character. She exceptionally bright and good at sussing people’s motives and weaknesses – as a trained negotiator would be.  But she is privileged having the kind of job and salary that so few have but intriguingly feels an outsider to society in being a British Asian and she sees both cultures view her as an outsider. Tangle for her was a painful lesson learnt so she’s puzzled as to why he wants her to help his legacy and initially this is about survival. It’s fascinating watching her build herself back together initially to restore her old lifestyle but her exposure to seeing the world outside a London office starts to show us what the state of the world is and she gets a motive.  There is also a fascinating commentary on how our social media scores can sometime be more important to us than some of the nastier things we know happen in the world – possibly as that appears to be one of the few things we can control?

The worldbuilding here is what really drew me in. This a world where the UK is an isolated power sitting outside the UK and trying to keep itself relevant as a global power and not ashamed to get its hands dirty. The US is in civil war and the EU is getting riven part with terrorist attacks and mysterious powers seeking its destruction. In countries falling apart small groups of people are trying to find a better way and their lives are on the line.  It’s our world plus just a few decades and its predictions are often chilling but so so plausible. So, while a chase across the world is thrilling the world it’s set in adds a darker hue and watching Amanda realise she can’t turn a blind eye to this is a sobering reminder that a lot goes on in our world that we often may be consciously ignoring. Being plunged into this makes the reader themselves question what is the right thing to be doing. 

The pace is frenetic and when action is required then Hotston has quite a good voice for making scenes come alive. Even a potato peeler can be quite intimidating in the wrong hands. Gunfights, mercenaries and hackers are swirled together in quite a poweful mix and soon it becomes very clear it’s not just an action film set but actual lives are on the line. And it’s in this plot that Hotston has added an intriguing look at where technology is going and the application of its uses.  A world that is increasingly seeing AI is soon going to have some fascinating debates on how they should work. This poses an interesting moral debate and this really comes alive in the final act. My one niggle is sometimes the explanation of the technology feels a bit more info dumping than a natural discussion between two characters examining a subject.

I really found myself sucked into this race to save the world and was very impressed how Hotston has created such an interesting setting. In an odd way, this felt to me a book like Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe series where SF can subtly examine the future of our little corner of the world but where Hutchinson opted for a take on the cold war here we have a slick intelligent cyber thriller.  I’ll be very interested in what Hotston has in store for future tales.