The Netherlands - YLO - Nicholas Clare
This wasn't hunted out or gifted! The author himself saw a post on a Science Fiction Book club Facebook group we are both part of. I had posted about by search for books from around the world, and Nicholas let me know he is a science fiction author from The Netherlands! BOOM a visit to his website and a couple of emails later I have a signed, first edition winging its way to be added to my collection!
This kind of interaction and making these contacts has been some of the most fun parts of this project. So this book is leap frogging other books straight to the top of the reading pile. A review will be coming as soon as I've read it!
The Physical Book:Its a super cool cover, nice and stylised, and I really like the simple title too.
The story is set far in the future where the class system is very strict and every is given a colour which with hard work and loyalty can get you upgraded. The protagonist is a police officer named Ylo-Jen. Ylo being her class. The story revolves around Ylo-Jen trying to solve the murder of woman who has no classification embedded in her, and never had. This anomaly opens up a huge cover up.
There's an awesome scene just after Ylo-Jen realises the importance of the dead body, and invokes 'blacking up', where shes assumes temporary black level status to escalate the discovery. The story builds and engaging and I was fully drawn into the book. There is some great digs at the church and how God had become Gaia, homosexuality and become outlawed. Prayer had been replaced with blogging. It was a weird dystopian future. But the story was epic. Ylo is the first book in a trilogy, but there is no news on the sequels to date
There's an awesome scene just after Ylo-Jen realises the importance of the dead body, and invokes 'blacking up', where shes assumes temporary black level status to escalate the discovery. The story builds and engaging and I was fully drawn into the book. There is some great digs at the church and how God had become Gaia, homosexuality and become outlawed. Prayer had been replaced with blogging. It was a weird dystopian future. But the story was epic. Ylo is the first book in a trilogy, but there is no news on the sequels to date
How Dutch:
Nope, nothing dutch about the book. not even a little nod, like Orange being the highest colour. But another great find, and treat to being able to chat with the author over emails.