MALL

In Palmer-Baker’s debut fantasy, an elementary school teacher stumbles into an apparent other world rife with pleasures—but it’s a realm some people are trying to escape.

Sara is at a typical shopping mall with her generally indifferent husband, Carl. When Carl brazenly flirts with a female clerk, Sara, desperate to get away from him, leaves through an unmarked door. Though she still seems to be in a mall, she eventually learns it’s simply Mall, which is another world entirely. After Mall guards detain Sara for “amoking”—their variation on running amok—she gets an assigned “Mental Health Practitioner” in Nona. The MHP is shocked that Sara claims ignorance of Mall’s various regulations, such as administering drugs to neutralize negative feelings. Fascinated by the woman from Outside, Nona helps her avoid unwanted attention by securing for her an ID, customary flashy Mall attire, and employment. Sara, looking for a way home, zeroes in on Junkers, a group of people anonymously wreaking havoc, whose apparent goal is making it Outside. But with a loveless marriage awaiting, Sara may prefer staying right where she is. Nona, meanwhile, starts questioning some of what Mall’s Code forbids, like sex with certain people. There’s a discernible parallelism between Sara and Nona. While Nona ultimately sees Mall’s shortcomings, Sara sees its appeal, including that of a potential partner in lieu of Carl, who actively avoids sex with her. Despite abundant discussions on sex, both hypothetical and realized, there are no erotic scenes. Rather, Palmer-Baker showcases characters’ frosty attitude toward sex, one that Sara discovers has little to do with love. The frequent use of dialogue unfortunately comes at the expense of the particulars of the environment, like creepy “moving mannequins” that the narrative mentions only sporadically. Nevertheless, the author amps up the story with notable threats against Sara and Nona; if either has ties to Junkers, they could face Judgment (with a prisonlike sentence) or Mem-wipe, in which they’d lose some or all memories. 

A sparsely detailed but engrossing dystopian tale with well-rounded lead characters.