'Do you remember Doctor Cummings who treated you when you had measles? Well, soon there will be no doctors. If you get sick, you will just pass over.’
‘If you have a Ticket,’ Peter said.
‘That’s right. And soon, having a Ticket will be the only thing anyone cares about. Not studying, not working, not doing the right thing. Nothing real.’ [p. 125]
The setting is an alternate Great Britain in the late 1930s. The Nazis never came to power, because Germany suffered a crushing defeat in WW1 -- partly as a result of the new ectotechnology. '...the ectotanks were created to break the deadlock of the trenches in the Great War: weapons that grew more powerful the more they killed". In the late 19th century, radio contact was made with the dead: now, half a century later, ectophones and ectomail connect the great metropolis of Summerland to the world of the living. In Summerland, Victoria reigns; in Summerland, the Presence watches every Soviet citizen. Anyone in Britain can, in theory, acquire a Ticket to prevent their dead spirit from Fading before it reaches Summerland. Anyone in the USSR knows that when they die, they will join the Presence.
There's war in Spain, the Soviet Union versus Great Britain. Rachel White is an SIS operative for the Winter Court (the living) who discovers that a mole is betraying Britain's secrets to the Soviets. Rachel's superiors regard her as inferior because of her sex, but Rachel is determined to prove them wrong. And Peter Bloom, an operative who's now in Summerland, is about to discover some unexpected truths about himself.
A spy novel crossed with a ghost story, and peppered with real-world individuals such as Kim Philby and Roger Hollis: this should have grabbed my attention from the first page until the last. But this is the second time I'd attempted to read it, and it still felt a little hollow. Several plot elements are left unresolved (the Cullers, the Old Dead, the absence of non-human spirits) as though this was intended to be the first in a trilogy. I liked the world-building very much -- Pope Teilhard! National Death Service! Edison dolls! -- but the characters felt two-dimensional.
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