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Louise Carey

Inscape Paperback – 21 Jan. 2021

by Louise Carey (Author)

12 ratings

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'Louise Carey's dystopian future is chillingly plausible' Claire North

Inscape is the dystopian future we would do best to avoid.

Warning: use of this gate will take you outside of the InTech corporate zone. Different community guidelines may apply, and you may be asked to sign a separate end-user license agreement. Do you wish to continue?

Tanta has trained all her young life for this. Her very first mission is a code red: to take her team into the unaffiliated zone just outside InTech's borders and retrieve a stolen hard drive. It should have been quick and simple, but a surprise attack kills two of her colleagues and Tanta barely makes it home alive.

Determined to prove herself and partnered with a colleague whose past is a mystery even to himself, Tanta's investigation uncovers a sinister conspiracy that makes her question her own loyalties and the motives of everyone she used to trust.

'In Tanta's world, warring corporations battle over the ruins of our civilisation. This is cyberpunk rebooted' Stephen Baxter

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Gollancz
Publication date

21 Jan. 2021
Dimensions

15.2 x 4.4 x 23.2 cm
ISBN-10

1473232740
ISBN-13

978-1473232747
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Product details

Publisher : Gollancz (21 Jan. 2021)
Language : English
Paperback : 432 pages
ISBN-10 : 1473232740
ISBN-13 : 978-1473232747
Dimensions : 15.2 x 4.4 x 23.2 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 267,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 987 in Techno Thrillers
- 1,009 in Cyberpunk
- 2,918 in Dystopian

Customer reviews:
12 ratings

Product description

Review

In Tanta's world, warring corporations battle over the ruins of our civilisation. This is cyberpunk rebooted. Upload this now ― Stephen Baxter

Louise Carey's dystopian future is chillingly plausible . . . It is a rare gift for a book to be a warning, an adventure, a stark reminder of the fragility of the world we hold dear, and a thrilling ride that catches you by the heart and keeps you enthralled and guessing to the end ― Claire North

Deftly written, masterfully paced, vividly imagined, and absolutely gripping from the first page to last . . . Inscape is a total blast. Calling Hollywood: here's your next big streaming hit ― Joe Hill

A propulsive thriller plot filled with great twists and reversals. ― SFX Magazine

A page-turning thriller. ― The Guardian

SF that rockets along ― Live Otherwise blog

The pace is cracking, the writing immersive, the action sequences excellently visual, and the characters are solid and relatable. ― Fantasy Book Nerd

Book Description

Introducing a razor-sharp debut SF thriller, INSCAPE holds a mirror up to our own reality by exploring just where our sinister corporation-led world might lead us. For fans of Bladerunner 2049, Mr Robot or 84K by Claire North.

Inscape, Louise Carey, Joe Hill, SF, science fiction, debut, technology, Gollancz

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Frank Seymour

Can't wait for the sequel.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 February 2021

Verified Purchase

Absolutely riveting, the only thing I didn't like was how it left me in suspense and wanting to know when the sequel is due out and what it will be called.

Helpful

Gripping combination of action thriller and exploration of the impact of psychological manipulation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 January 2021

I've never been a huge fan of dystopian novels or movies - life can be miserable enough without making us even more depressed - but there are exceptions, and Louise Carey's Inscape proved to be one of them.

Broadly, SF dystopias fall into two categories - bangs and whimpers. In a bang dystopia there is a big, sudden catastrophe, often a nuclear war, a biological disaster (think The Death of Grass) or a touch of the aliens (War of the Worlds, The Day of the Triffids and many more). By contrast, whimper dystopias involve creeping change, traditionally political (1984), but ever since Pohl and Kornbluth's classic The Space Merchants, more likely to be the fault of corporates, which these days are usually a variation on the theme of today's IT giants.

Interestingly, Inscape involves both types of dystopia - so there has been an apocalyptic collapse (not entirely explained), but post-collapse it's the tech corporations that have taken over, with the central character Tanta being under the aegis of InTech - a young agent who is sent into action against the opposing corporation Thoughtfront (I kept reading this as 'Thoughtful', which probably doesn't give the right flavour). The setting gradually reveals itself to be a single, unnamed city divided by a river, which suggested a familiar location.

Carey gives us brilliantly driving action (so much so that I hardly noticed the book was written in the present tense, which I usually find jarring to read). However, there's a lot more to the book than the action. Tanta is a ward of the corporation, brought up her entire life to do their bidding. We get some really interesting psychological aspects here in the way that Tanta and her cohort have effectively been programmed for loyalty - and a striking revelation about the technology that supports this.

Tanta's near super-powered agent ends up in an odd-couple pairing with Cole, a neuroscientist/genius programmer whose memory has been partially wiped. He's over twice her age, unfit and unsuited to the danger of the fieldwork he's thrown into. This gives the storyline considerably more depth than is usually the case in a novel where the main character is only 17.

I was totally immersed in the world that Carey has created here and enjoyed every minute of it. Of course there are plenty of details familiar from other SF novels in terms of the characters having built-in comms and information technology (the 'inscape' of the title), but a combination of well-choreographed action scenes and thoughtful consideration of the impact of the mental manipulation and gradual realisation of what this means made for something more than a typical SF action adventure. I can't wait for the next book, featuring further revelations hinted at when we reach the end of Inscape.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Fantasy book nerd

A sleek and stylish sci fi thriller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 January 2021

Louise Carey’s stylish and sleek first book is a sci fi thriller set in a post - apocalyptic London.

Following a cataclysmic event called The Meltdown, the world has been taken over by Corporations, run by boards and CEO’s. These Corporations are warring factions that dominate the people of the world and the story revolves the cold war between Intech and the breakaway corporation Thoughtfront, who have both taken control of London, dividing it equally on each side of the Thames.

The story starts with a mission to retrieve some stolen data files that have been taken to a place that has no allegiance to either of the two Corporations called the ‘Unaffiliated Zone’. And it is here that we meet Tanta. A rookie agent for the Intech Corporation who has been given the task by her mentor ‘Jen’ to retrieve the stolen files. However, the mission is a disaster and the squad is attacked by an enemy agent.

After returning to Headquarters, Tanta is debriefed and despite her first field assignment not going to plan, she is given the task of finding out what was on the stolen files. She is quickly promoted from rookie to Agent and later in the story, introduced to her ‘partner’ Cole. A neuro engineer that has been involved in a corporate accident, that whilst leaving him incapable of carrying out his original job, he is still a valuable asset, particularly in relation to this case.

As we move through the story, we are introduced to the world of Inscape. From the very beginning of the book, Louise Carey carefully starts introducing to the world and the technology that is predominant in the book. We are shown that the Inscape is a piece of biotech that overlays the world that the protagonists live in with an Augmented Reality. I really like this idea of the Inscape, and Louise Carey does a fantastic job of showing the reader how the it affects the characters and those around them.

One of the strengths of the book, is that Louise Carey does not info dump the world on you but unfurls the environment as the story progresses and we are always learning some new nugget of information about the city. She carefully adds layer upon layer of information showing how the environment, monetary systems, political systems and technology impact on those living in this world and it organically feels part of the story rather than one big info dump which you can get in both sci – fi and fantasy novels.

Inscape mainly revolves around the two main characters, Tanta and Cole. These are the two that have to hold the weight of the story on their shoulders. So, it is a good job that they are solid, believable and relatable characters. Especially Tanta!

When we first meet Tanta, I didn't wholly gel with her. She’s a little too quick to please the commands of her mentor Jen, and the corporation as a whole. It almost seems to border on subservience. We learn that she is a Corpsward, an orphan who has been brought up by Intech and we know that there is something a little off about Tanta (I am not going to elaborate too much as this is part of the plot). As the plot moves on and events come into play. Tanta changes and you warm to her more. Particularly in the second part of the book! This is when Tanta starts to learn and experiences things about those she works with and herself. As she realises the impact of the thing she discovers, she changes, and we get to share that change with her.

Cole is a little different. As I said earlier, he has been involved in an accident that has rendered him unfit to complete his original job. In some ways, when they first meet it reminded me of the traditional pairing story in a police procedural. One cop does it strictly by the book and is teamed with the maverick who breaks all the rules. However, the relationship between the two grows throughout the book, and again, Carey cleverly layers this growing relationship and we learn that this friendship doesn’t come out of the blue. As the story progresses we can see that there are reasons for this relationship and that Cole has some latent feelings for Tanta.

From the very first chapter, Louise Carey immerses you in the story from the outset. And, even though initially you are a little disorientated with the world of Inscape, trying to work out what this does, why this works the way it does etc.go with the flow and you will find that all is revealed one way or another.

It took me a little bit to get used to the book at first as it is written in the present tense. I have always found that I have a bit of a difficulty getting into books that are written in the present tense, for some reason. I don’t know why, but I need a period of adjustment. However, it didn’t take me long and then I was fine, happily immersed in the world of Inscape.

Obviously, as a thriller, you need to be able to write good action sequences. And Louise Carey certainly can write good action sequences. The hand to hand combat sequence with the enemy agent for instance is cracking. The visual aesthetics of it really worked and I felt that I was actually watching this on a screen in my head rather than it being a sequence of letters on a page.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book. The pace is cracking, the writing immersive, the action sequences excellently visual, and the characters are solid and relatable. As one of the first books that I read this year, I hope the rest of the books that I read can compare to this standard. Apparently, this is the first one of a series. So I cannot wait to see what happens next.

I initially received an advanced reading copy for Inscape from Netgalley and the Publishers. My thanks go to them for this. However, I loved this book so much, I bought it!

One person found this helpful

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