Scan barcode
A review by markyon
Inscape by Louise Carey
4.0
“We live in strange times..” – how often have you heard that lately? As I type this, many workers are in lockdown here, with occasional excursions allowed for essentials like food and exercise.
It is getting to the point where many can’t remember a world outside their own walls, their last journey to work – or indeed their last visit to a city. I was reminded of this whilst reading Inscape – a novel set in some sort of corporation-led future London. It really is set in what feels like a different world – one where people are surrounded by tall buildings of glass and steel, go outside, go to bars and restaurants, even talk to one another in close contact – all those things people vaguely remember doing a year ago.
It is a world of cities divided up by corporate gates, each with its own culture and ambience. The two biggest companies here are InTech and Thoughtfront, who are entwined in an ongoing corporate battle for supremacy. In the future it seems that wars are caused less by military actions and more by corporate ones. The world outside the corporate zones, though briefly glimpsed, sound like what I remember East Germany was like before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The businesses however reign supreme, with skyscrapers of glass and ultra-modern architecture towering over all of the city. Think The Shard or the Freedom Tower, but bigger.
Our story is very much focused around Tanta, a newly-qualified Corporate Ward. Having being brought up by InTech from a baby in a Ward House - some sort of corporate creche - she is extremely well-trained and perhaps unsurprisingly supremely loyal to the company – some would say perhaps too loyal. She is deliriously happy when praised for her work, usually by her boss Jennifer Ash, and mortified when she is criticised for doing something below her optimum level.
Her first mission seems fairly simple and straightforward – to go outside InTech’s zone and retrieve a stolen hard drive. However, when she takes her team into the field of action two of them are unexpectedly killed. It seems that there is more to this than Tanta expected. Some sort of cybervirus seems to have attacked InTech, probably because of the information on the hard drive Tanta and her team went to collect.
Instead of being reprimanded, Tanta is asked to discover who leaked the data. She is then given a new colleague to work with – a middle-aged cyber-expert named Cole who was in some sort of strange accident that has left him with a mysterious past that he cannot remember.
Together they both uncover secrets that involve their pasts and lead to them questioning everything they know.
Inscape is a great fast-paced read. It’s an intriguing premise, that deals with corporate high-jinks in a place where businesses rule the world. Typing it like that, it’s not too far a stretch of the imagination to see companies like Amazon or Microsoft covertly behaving like what we read here in a world where the stakes for success are so high. (but please note that I’m not saying those companies are doing this!)
As this is a future-novel, there’s a certain degree of poetic licence with future technology involved – self-driving vehicles, top-secret adaptations of the brain, the ability to mind-wipe, and so on. And whilst the corporate shenanigans are ramped up to the ninth in some sort of Big Brother world where surveillance is normal, loyalty is paramount and you can be killed for not doing your job properly, there are some aspects that are pleasant and likeable. The main characters in particular are nicely paired, with Cole becoming a father-figure to Tanta, which is needed when some home truths are revealed to her. Tanta herself is intriguing as some sort of corporate super-soldier who eventually questions everything.
Although Louise has co-authored two books already for Gollancz, this is her first solo effort. As the Acknowledgements at the end of the book show, it’s been in the making for nearly five years, and it shows. It’s a good solid page turner, which sets off at a fast pace, creates an intriguing world (even if it’s not one I’d personally like to live in) and some characters who are worthy of your attention. The end clearly leaves room for a sequel, which would not be unread by me. Though we live in strange times, Inscape shows that they could be stranger.
It is getting to the point where many can’t remember a world outside their own walls, their last journey to work – or indeed their last visit to a city. I was reminded of this whilst reading Inscape – a novel set in some sort of corporation-led future London. It really is set in what feels like a different world – one where people are surrounded by tall buildings of glass and steel, go outside, go to bars and restaurants, even talk to one another in close contact – all those things people vaguely remember doing a year ago.
It is a world of cities divided up by corporate gates, each with its own culture and ambience. The two biggest companies here are InTech and Thoughtfront, who are entwined in an ongoing corporate battle for supremacy. In the future it seems that wars are caused less by military actions and more by corporate ones. The world outside the corporate zones, though briefly glimpsed, sound like what I remember East Germany was like before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The businesses however reign supreme, with skyscrapers of glass and ultra-modern architecture towering over all of the city. Think The Shard or the Freedom Tower, but bigger.
Our story is very much focused around Tanta, a newly-qualified Corporate Ward. Having being brought up by InTech from a baby in a Ward House - some sort of corporate creche - she is extremely well-trained and perhaps unsurprisingly supremely loyal to the company – some would say perhaps too loyal. She is deliriously happy when praised for her work, usually by her boss Jennifer Ash, and mortified when she is criticised for doing something below her optimum level.
Her first mission seems fairly simple and straightforward – to go outside InTech’s zone and retrieve a stolen hard drive. However, when she takes her team into the field of action two of them are unexpectedly killed. It seems that there is more to this than Tanta expected. Some sort of cybervirus seems to have attacked InTech, probably because of the information on the hard drive Tanta and her team went to collect.
Instead of being reprimanded, Tanta is asked to discover who leaked the data. She is then given a new colleague to work with – a middle-aged cyber-expert named Cole who was in some sort of strange accident that has left him with a mysterious past that he cannot remember.
Together they both uncover secrets that involve their pasts and lead to them questioning everything they know.
Inscape is a great fast-paced read. It’s an intriguing premise, that deals with corporate high-jinks in a place where businesses rule the world. Typing it like that, it’s not too far a stretch of the imagination to see companies like Amazon or Microsoft covertly behaving like what we read here in a world where the stakes for success are so high. (but please note that I’m not saying those companies are doing this!)
As this is a future-novel, there’s a certain degree of poetic licence with future technology involved – self-driving vehicles, top-secret adaptations of the brain, the ability to mind-wipe, and so on. And whilst the corporate shenanigans are ramped up to the ninth in some sort of Big Brother world where surveillance is normal, loyalty is paramount and you can be killed for not doing your job properly, there are some aspects that are pleasant and likeable. The main characters in particular are nicely paired, with Cole becoming a father-figure to Tanta, which is needed when some home truths are revealed to her. Tanta herself is intriguing as some sort of corporate super-soldier who eventually questions everything.
Although Louise has co-authored two books already for Gollancz, this is her first solo effort. As the Acknowledgements at the end of the book show, it’s been in the making for nearly five years, and it shows. It’s a good solid page turner, which sets off at a fast pace, creates an intriguing world (even if it’s not one I’d personally like to live in) and some characters who are worthy of your attention. The end clearly leaves room for a sequel, which would not be unread by me. Though we live in strange times, Inscape shows that they could be stranger.