Eminent Domain (2020)

By Carl Neville

460pp, Fiction

Notes

2023-06-15

Is this still the world she lives in? The world in which no one goes hungry or unloved, no one faces old age with fear or sees their life consumed by the drudgery of work, where the pace of life has slowed and there is time for play and contemplation, to explore the world and each other, all forms of life, all species, everything fallen into the embrace of a humanity liberated at last, free from struggle and united as one world into its finer nature?

Coldwar thriller set in alternate 2018, the UK has become the Peoples Republic of Britain having undergone a period of social collapse and revolution during the 80s/90s. The Autarchy and The Breach. Really,m emorable but I found it oddly dissapointing.

I’m not much into cold war espionage stuff (Le Carré etc) books and this takes its plot outline from that genre (very apt), all hidden motives etc.

On the other hand I had no problem with the back and forth structure that some reviews have griped at, though perhaps the obstacles it puts up when combined with the number of made up words etc. is too much of the wrong sort of friction.

I loved so much about this book. The tiny details of world building, the underlying philosphy which rejects historical materialism even as the central (ambiguous) utopia embraces the concept whole-heartedly, all of it. The way attachment to things is considered a mental illness to be medicated is a fantastic detail and a pointed comment. It’s a novel which has things to say and does so clearly though the world building.

It’s the kind of book I’m going to recomend to people and buy for people just so I can talk to about it, about everything that’s great and everything that’s wrong with it. i.e. This is the best kind of book.