DEAD NEW WORLD

In Darrow’s SF novel, set 1,000 years in the future, society grapples with the implications of the “formerly dead” and the rising ghost-gig economy.

In 3025, the brilliant Yemi Callo has conquered both inconvenient amputations and death itself through the use of holographic prosthetics and a device called the Resurrection Engine. Earth is now known as Former-Earth, and the human diaspora has fanned out across seven moons following the great Exodus of 2001. A worlds-spanning governing body called the Lunar Council oversees it all…or at least attempts to. As fanciful as all that sounds, Darrow’s immersive worldbuilding and her consistently droll narrative convincingly transport readers to the far-flung future with the greatest of ease. Hildegard Doval, known as Hildy, is the unassuming protagonist who grounds the kaleidoscopic wonders flowing out of the author’s impressive imagination. Once an unremarkable librarian who died at the age of 32, the instantly relatable Hildy awakens to discover that she is the 7,412th specter to be brought back to life by the Resurrection Engine (the Lunar Council, citing “economic concerns” and “crimes against nature,” has put a cap on resurrections at 10,000). Hildy just wants a little love, and to remake the world so that specs like her are treated with a lot more dignity and respect. She wishes she were a more popular pick at Carlotta Sun’s Purgatory House, a kind of bordello where flesh-and-blood folks (and some ghosts) go to enjoy the company of strangers, but at least it’s a job that provides the dead with something resembling a real purpose. Not all the “formerly dead” agree with that view, however. “The Living are incapable of truly confronting death, so they infantilize us. You, like all our spectral brethren, have been conscripted into service to comfort and appease them,”the rebellious Captain Teodora Galán complains to Hildy’s much more popular pal, Eyvind. Beneath all the gauzy goings-on and miraculous tech unfolds a shadowy mystery involving an enigmatic entity known as the Graverobber whom Hildy and her close-knit group of friends must confront before their undead lives are further turned inside out. “Trippy” doesn’t begin to describe this wild yarn—it is truly inventive and fun.

A triumphant work from a unique visionary.