BLOG TOUR: The Girl in the Road - Monica Byrne

Title: The Girl in the Road
Author: Monica Byrne
Series: Nona
Publisher: Little Brown, UK
Publication Date: 1st January, 2014

Stunningly original and wildly inventive, The Girl in the Road melds the influences of Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, and Erin Morgenstern for a dazzling debut. Meena, a young woman living in a futuristic Mumbai, wakes up with five snake bites on her chest. She doesn't know how or why, but she must flee India and return to Ethiopia, the place of her birth. Having long heard about The Trail -- an energy-harvesting bridge that spans the Arabian Sea -- she embarks on foot on this forbidden bridge, with its own subculture and rules. What awaits her in Ethiopia is unclear; she's hoping the journey will illuminate it for her. Mariama, a girl from a different time, is on a quest of her own. After witnessing her mother's rape, she joins up with a caravan of strangers heading across Saharan Africa. She meets Yemaya, a beautiful and enigmatic woman who becomes her protector and confidante. Yemaya tells Mariama of Ethiopia, where revolution is brewing and life will be better. Mariama hopes against hope that it offers much more than Yemaya ever promised. As one heads east and the other west, Meena and Mariama's fates will entwine in ways that are profoundly moving and shocking to the core. Vividly imagined and artfully told, written with stunning clarity and deep emotion, The Girl in the Road is a true tour de force.

REVIEW: The Hive Construct - Alexander Maskill

Title: The Hive Construct
Author: Alexander Maskill
Series: None
Publisher: Transworld Publishers
Source: Review Copy
Publication Date: 13th August, 2015

Winner of the Terry Pratchett Prize, a dark yet dazzlingly imaginative science fiction thriller by a furiously talented new young writer Situated deep in the Sahara Desert, New Cairo is a city built on technology—from the huge, life-giving solar panels that keep it functioning in a radically changed, resource-scarce world to the artificial implants that have become the answer to all and any of mankind's medical problems. But it is also a divided city, dominated by a handful of omnipotent corporate dynasties. And when a devastating new computer virus begins to spread through the poorest districts, shutting down the life-giving implants that enable so many to survive, the city begins to slide into the anarchy of violent class struggle. Hiding amid the chaos is Zala Ulora. A gifted hacker and fugitive from justice, she believes she might be able to earn her life back by tracing the virus to its source and destroying it before it destroys the city—or before the city destroys itself. With its vivid characters, bold ideas, and explosive action, The Hive is science fiction at its most exciting, inventive, and accessible.

BLOG TOUR: The Hive Construct - Inspiration Behind Zala

Today Alexander Maskill, debut author and winner of the Terry Pratchett Prize to talk to us about the influences behind his protagonist, Zara. 

However much I try to insist that The Hive Construct (out now in paperback from all reputable booksellers!) is an ensemble work, I can’t pretend I didn’t realise that people would gravitate towards de facto main character Zala Ulora. She’s capable, she’s deeply flawed but capable of growth, she’s enough of an outsider to the setting that the reader gravitates towards her perspective most easily of all the perspective characters, she collides with the setting’s various factions without being directly beholden to them, and her story arc carries most of the heavy lifting regarding plot.