REVIEW of iRemember by SV Bekvalac

iRemember
'The city of iRemember shimmers in the desert haze, watched over by the Bureau, a government agency that maintains control through memory surveillance and little pink pills made from the narcotic plant Tranquelle.
It looks like an oasis under its geodesic dome, but the city is under siege. ‘Off-Gridder’ insurgents are fighting to be forgotten.
Bureau Inspector Icara Swansong is on a mission to neutralise the threat. Her investigation leads her into iRemember’s secret underbelly, where she finds herself a fugitive from the very system she had vowed to protect. She has to learn new rules: trust no one. Behind every purple Tranquelle stalk lurk double-agents.
A sci-fi noir with a psychedelic twist, iRemember explores the power the past holds over us and the fragility of everything: what is, what once was, and what will be.'


MY REVIEW:
When you read a lot of sci-fi (and I do), it is supremely refreshing to come across a voice as assured and consistent as that of SV Bekvalac. The world she creates is compelling - like all the best sci-fi, it includes aspects of AI and opium-for-the-people that are easily recognisable.

It is a world that is still patriarchal but like all the best stories of rebellion, there's a lost princess at its core. The gloriously named Icara Swansong is the beating heart of this future-fable. Aided, abetted and frequently thwarted by the other characters in the book, her personal psychodrama inspires the catharsis that may - or may not - improve the lot of humankind.

I particularly liked the portrayal of our poor old planet; part dystopian Mad Max desert and Philip K Dick last-chance saloon, it seemed simultaneously all too real and just far enough distant for the reader to think 'no! we can reverse all this!'

But back to the author's voice. She writes in a clipped noir style that wastes not a single word. Her style is breathtaking, and this was the stand-out element of the book for me. It ends with a hint at a sequel. We can but hope.

Buy it at Amazon.

AUTHOR BIO
SV Bekvalac was born in 1987 in Croatia, in what was then Yugoslavia, but grew up in London.
She studied German and Russian at Oxford, and went to film school in Prague. After almost becoming a film-maker and then an academic, researching cities and films, she found herself writing fiction about cities instead. She started off with screenplays and short stories, but they got longer and longer. iRemember is her first novel.
She has lived in cities all over Europe. Now she lives in London, or in one of her own imaginary cities.


Follow her on Twitter.
Also @EyeAndLightning