On the other, it’s not an easy reading experience. On the one hand, it’s a terrifying look at capitalism’s slippery slopes and a realistic depiction of how a person’s will can shrivel into apathy and fear. From that point on, Theo takes up Dani’s struggle to reveal the depth and breadth of the Company’s evil.

When Dani Cumali, a woman from his secret past, turns up threatening to expose him, he grudgingly helps her - until he finds her dead, her assassin casually phoning in the murder in order to pay the indemnity. But Theo - a milquetoast, middle-class middleman - isn’t entirely what he seems: His name and history are a lie. His job is to determine the value of human lives and the indemnity owed for any given crime. Theo Miller is an adjuster employed by the Criminal Audit Office. Functionally, what this means is that the wealthy can do whatever they please while more and more people are forced into work camps, especially as it’s cheaper for the Company to employ those who’ve been convicted of crimes than those who haven’t. People convicted of crimes, no matter how heinous, are fined failure to pay sends them to “the patty line,” where they work in indentured servitude until they’ve settled their debt to society. In a near-future Britain, human rights have been abolished people are only as important as their worth to the Company that runs the government. The acceleration at the hearts of these vast structures and systems is outpacing our ability to discuss and constrain their effects on us - so here are some books that work hard to catch up.Ĭlaire North’s 84K (Orbit, paper, $15.99) is a vicious, engrossing portrait of unregulated capitalism carried to its logical conclusion. But a fast pace is more than a generic quality speed today deserves attention as a subject in its own right, whether in the propagation of misinformation through social networks, the opaque and instantaneous transfers of capital into cryptocurrencies and tax havens or the cataclysmic changes in our climate. Science fiction and fantasy thrillers are often seen as frivolous, action-packed page turners, as critically dismissed as they are compulsively consumed.

Trail of lightning