MODELS AND CITIZENS

Two heroes must navigate a society divided between natural-born humans and lab-created beings in Sweet’s dystopian SF thriller.

In 2185, Harper Rawls lives in League City, Texas. Her father, Matthew, owns the Jarro bar, frequented by members of the Human Pride Movement, who act violently toward beings born in labs, known officially as “models.” When Matthew learns that his wife, Aayushi, has cheated on him with a model, he kills her and himself with a proton rifle. After Harper recovers from this psychological trauma in a hospital, she meets Ordell Bentley, Aayushi’s lover, who’s on the run from both the Human Pride Movement and Emergent Biotechnology, the company that created and owns him. He’s considering escaping to Canada with the assistance of the Freedom Underground movement. Harper and Ordell bond, due to their shared feelings of displacement, and decide to make an escape together. She gets a job as a biology lab administrator under Dr. Torrent Toussaint as part of this plan, but things get complicated when she and the doctor fall for each other. She becomes a Model Advocate for the lab as its research investigates consciousness using a series of models. Then bounty hunters find Ordell, and Harper must figure out how to save him. Sweet opens his dystopian series in a world that feels upsettingly plausible, due to a series of climate disasters called “Equilibrium,” which raised oceans and killed grasslands; reproductive rates crashed, making models a solution to labor shortages. Biological implants also convincingly change humans’ lives; Harper, for instance, has a “micro-mood stabilizer” to regulate her brain’s chemicals. But although future science drives his plot, Sweet’s central themes deal with relatable sociological and political themes; at one point, for instance, Toussaint’s lab partner Railynn Marche tells Harper of her own advocacy for models, and how their society has a long way to go when it comes to accepting them: “People may listen and nod along, but whether you change what's in their hearts is different.” In the end, the cast strives on through a convincingly imperfect world.

An appealingly soul-searching dystopian novel that emphasizes its characters’ inherent humanity.