Now humankind is finally coming into its own, bending and stretching genes in the manner of gods. It was only a matter of time before they muddled their way into bending the exact right genes to reveal that they were gods. Those genes, gone dry and brittle from lack of use, are just begging for an open flame. [p. 61]
The setting is the Eastern Cape in 2064. Alphies (levitating robot assistants) have replaced smartphones; there's a new drug on the street, which seems to confer superpowers; and the roads and parks are overrun by hundreds of thousands of dik-diks.
Our protagonists are a teenage Xhosa boy named Muzikayise, a rugby star, who's secretly in love with his (male) best friend; Riya, a pop diva who keeps her MS at bay with street drugs; Wallace Stoker, cis male politician by day and cabaret superstar Felicity Lyons by night, whose mother is overprotective; Nomvula, a ten-year-old girl who looks after her mentally-ill mother and talks to Mr Tau, who may be a deity and / or her father; Clever4-1, an alphie which seems to be developing a 'spark'; and Sydney, a demi-goddess fallen on hard times who is plotting to regain her power and 'plunge South Africa into a darkness not seen since the days of apartheid. If that’s what it’ll take to get these humans to believe in something, it’s what she’ll have to do.' Each has a secret: each will emerge greatly transformed after Riya's sold-out megaconcert, the climax of this novel.
This was a fun read, fast-paced and twisty. It sometimes had a YA feel, perhaps because several of the characters are quite young, but it also reminded me of KPop Demon Hunters, which is not a bad thing. I loved Stoker, who's expecting a memory wipe, leaving himself a warning encoded in cosmetic colour names: 'Sunday Drive', 'Like a Bat Out of Hell', 'Mother of Pearl', 'Out to Get You', 'Remember', 'Concert Tee'. (I've always thought there were stories waiting to happen in cosmetic names.) I liked Muzi's desperate and misguided attempts to use his new-found powers. And I liked the origin mythology behind the story, a creator god whose children have the gifts of various animals: dolphin, peacock, crab...
The alphies, too, are truly interesting, with character, ambition, emotion and several conflicting agendas. This novel dates from 2017, before the current AI bubble: I wonder how differently Dreyden might write the alphies now.
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