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Quantum Drop by Saci Lloyd (view source)
Revision as of 13:37, 27 February 2013
, 13:37, 27 February 2013no edit summary
I liked the world-building, too. Lloyd's Debtbelt looks very much like the poor areas of today's inner cities, but it's just on a much larger scale. It's a scene of deprivation. Low level crime still exists on the streets, but the real money is to be made in the Drop, a virtual environment in which people are spending more and more time. ''Quantum Drop's'' environment isn't so very different from our own and you can see it won't take much techno-evolution to get there. Particularly if the next financial crash is an even bigger one.
But my favourite aspect of ''Quantum Drop'' isn't its characters. It isn't its racing plot. Or even its credible worldbuilding. It's its science. Anthony is a clever kid, if a messed up one. And biology is his subject. His thoughts are peppered with it. From the structure of our brains to verbal overshadowing, Anthony thinks about things that are desperately significant to us, his readers of today, but are too little talked about. It's funny, because I finished ''Quantum Drop'', sat down to watch some TV and listened to Brian Cox telling me about all the ways in which the laws of physics underpin our biology, and it was a seamless transition from book to screen. I love Saci Lloyd for this fierce intelligence in her writing - a fierce intelligence which assumes an equal equally fierce intelligence in its readers. You don't get many YA techo-thrillers doing that - if it's not in the FX or the chase, it's not there at all.
Anyway. I liked ''Quantum Drop''. Really liked it. As if you couldn't tell.