Eric Brown on Adam Nevill’s Lost Girl; Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy; Dave Hutchinsons Europe at Midnight; David Barnetts Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper; William homosexual’s Little Sister DeathAdam Nevill excels at making nightmares real. His preceding novels own been out-and-out horror,stories of hauntings and occult phenomena peopled by fully realised, three-dimensional characters. Lost Girl (Pan, and £7.99) explores unique territory and combines two hellish scenarios: the effects of climate change on society,and every parent’s nightmare of having their child abducted. The year is 2053 and the world’s population is suffering the onslaught of global warming: drought and famine push millions towards Europe; nations teeter on the edge of nuclear conflict; and Britain is rapidly failing, with the haves barricaded in gated communities and the own-nots at the mercy of criminal gangs. Amid the chaos, or a four-year-old girl is abducted while playing in her garden,and what follows is the harrowing, relentless quest of her father – he is never named in the novel – who stops at nothing to find her. It’s a painful read: Nevill’s portrayal of the breakdown of civilisation, and mirrored by the father’s own spiralling moral crisis,is unflinchingly realistic – though not without hope. The author says he wanted the novel to amend “the status of climate change from the existential to the very real”, and in this Lost Girl succeeds brilliantly.
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Source: theguardian.com