Rosewater

Sensitive thief

released 20 september 416 pages | paperback/ebook Author tade thompson Publisher Orbit books

Rosewater isn’t tade Thompson’s first novel, but like China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station – a book that feels like a key influence – it’s the one that will put him on the SF radar.

The world changed in 2012. An alien materialised in London and seeded the planet with Ascomycetes xenophericus – fungal spores that entered the atmosphere and activated “sensitives”, giving them the ability to read the thoughts and feelings of those around them. Some years later, a bizarre biomass has appeared in Nigeria. The sick are flocking to it in the hope of being cured by its seemingly magical properties and Kaaro – once a thief, now the best sensitive department S45 have ever known – finds himself hired to track down a mysterious anarchist only known as the Bicycle Girl...

This is a richly imagined future that’s both disorientingly different and oddly familiar. Nigeria in 2066 has a future-shock wildness to it, but the music’s (mostly) the same, there’s a strong vein of – often bleak – humour and people are still driven by lust, greed and the need to get through the daily grind. Despite his incredible gifts, Kaaro is a refreshingly normal hero too. He’s crap in a fight (which he’d much rather avoid anyway) and under the heel of his scary employers.

The plot can be frustratingly opaque – for much of the book both Kaaro and the reader are being swept along with only a partial grasp of what’s actually going on. Bear with it, though – the book resolves in a hugely satisfying final act. The weird fiction influences are clear throughout (fans of Jeff VanderMeer and the aforementioned Miéville will certainly get a kick from the book’s menagerie of grotesque creatures and mutated humans) but Thompson makes this stuff his own, infusing genre staples like zombies and ghosts with a melancholic SF spin. The first of a planned trilogy, Rosewater is a darkly beautiful gem.

Thompson wrote a Bond/Saint novel when he was just 15. A friend borrowed the only copy and never returned it!