In a ruined world, where wealthy humans
push health and longevity to extremes and surround themselves with a shining
metal wall, privilege and security is predicated on the services of cloned
Neandertals, and the exploitation of women in the shanty towns and wastelands
beyond the fortress city.
This is
the frightening yet moving story of orphaned Alida and her younger sister
Graycie, and their struggle for survival in the Demi-Settlements outside the
wall. When the sisters are forced to enter the City by very different means
they risk being separated forever.
Cloned
Neandertal officer, Shuqba is exiled to a security outpost in the
Demi-Settlements when she fails to adhere to the impossible standards set for
her species within the City. Will she offer a lifeline to Alida or betray her?
The Shining Wall is at once a frightening parable of
our unjust world of haves and have nots, a richly imagined yet thrilling story
of technological control and the fight for survival, and a paean to female
friendship and power.
'Gripping from the word GO. A
fearlessly feminist imagining of the entire fractured human genus in a
future none of us should ever have to face. The Shining Wall enshrines
familiar relationships even as it destroys genre tropes about a woman's role in
a ruined world. Leave it to a new voice like this to set the post-apocalyptic
construction on its ear. A triumph of realistic science fiction.' — Meg Elison, author of The
Book of the Unnamed Midwife
‘Gritty
and voicey, perhaps prescient, this is a gripping dystopia from a shining new
voice.’ — Marlee Jane Ward, author of Welcome to Orphancorp and Psynode
