...what I miss is what I never had. Being alive. Being real. Virtual girls are sweet as sugar and thin as paper. I’m trying to come up with a way to be something more than that, but the science is sketchy. [p.422]
Second in the Ramparts trilogy, which began with The Book of Koli: Koli is travelling south to London with Ursala (a healer who has some knowledge of technology), Cup (a trans girl who may be seeking vengeance for the death of her cult leader), and Monono (an AI housed in a Sony media player). Unlike the first volume, the narrative here isn't wholly Koli's: some chapters are told by Spinner, whose wedding was disrupted by Koli and Monono, and who's still living in Mythen Rood and beginning to question the supremacy of the Ramparts -- individuals who can use technology that survived the fall of civilisation. All the Ramparts come from the same family (what a coincidence, eh?) but Spinner finds herself 'assisting' one of them, an old man whose failing mind can't come up with the right questions for the 'database' device when a mysterious illness strikes the settlement.
Carey's depiction of a dystopian future England, in which literacy is a lost art and nature has turned against humanity, is horribly credible (and more vivid in this middle volume, when Koli and co see some of the effects of the Unfinished War and attendant disasters: layers of human bones in Birmagen, a new sea where London used to be, a community hiding in underground shelters. But the interactions of the characters, human and otherwise, are equally compelling and equally credible. I especially enjoyed the friction between Ursala and Monono, and Koli's defence of Cup.
I'd intended to let this one soak in for a while before embarking on the final volume: but the suspense had built to such a height that I could not. And the fragment of Monono's narrative was too tantalising to resist.
Fulfils the ‘Dystopian fiction’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.
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