★★★★
Charli Drever’s Panacea is a hard-driving, near future, sci-fi thrill ride that doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the dystopian narrative.
Don’t go into this book lightly. It’s full of the familiar heavy subjects one would expect in a modern dystopian storyline. There’s plenty of shocking police and military violence among the interconnected tales of racism and xenophobia. In some ways, it was a challenging read, given the state of things lately. But the story was grounded in a firm sense of realism. Drever included a considerably sized cast and frequently switched the point of view between several of them. Lending the reader these varying perspectives helps give the book the depth and gravitas of an adult-oriented story.
This is no Hunger Games. The most challenging part of the story was how close we are to the author’s reality becoming an actual reality. It’s easy to see a London–or any comparable, major, Western city/country hurtling towards crisis and collapse–where resources and education are allocated by status or class and 1st or even 2nd generation immigrants are sent back to their country of origin. And Drever wields technology like the double-edged weapon it is, offering it as one of the causes and solutions for their world’s problem.
This story contains mentions of violence, racism, mental illness, death, and mild drug use.