Book review
Written by Simon Morden
David Fickling Books hardback
Release date 5 July 2007

In a post-apocalyptic world where the magnetic poles have flipped, humans are living in a pre-technological society. In Russia, a monk and a princess set out to retrieve a set of stolen scientific books, while, in Arabia, a stranger arrives on a mysterious quest…

Morden’s book is described as ‘future fiction’, which neatly gets around the fact that this novel is more of a fantasy quest than sci fi, despite featuring the occasional presence of high-tech devices and spaceships. That said, this is a finely drawn account of the conflict between two cultures – one which has access to science, while the other believes it to be sorcery.

Morden has a amusing way of understating this culture clash: for example, the only way one character can conceive of an automated weapons platform is as a “floating tray of knives”. That the narrative is mostly related from the perspective of the non-tech characters adds an extra touch of mystery to the storyline.

The intriguing, three-dimensional characters all come with their own individual quirks and ambiguities (even the female characters, which is not always the case in sci fi). This is Morden’s first novel after a couple of short story collections, and on this basis he has a promising career ahead. Brigid Cherry

VERDICT: 7/10

A potent vision of the future that cracks along at a fair pace.