The Star Fraction

A most thought-provoking novel by Ken Macleod - the first volume in the Fall Revolution series. An England perpetually on the edge of collapse (along with pretty much everywhere else on Earth and in near-space) as a patchwork quilt of communities and forces tussle with one another - sometimes cooperating, at other times not at all - in the name of just about every social and political belief that you can bring to mind, along with a few you will not unless you're demented or intoxicated beyond measure. Engagingly complex, featuring, for example, a smart-gun whose sentience evolves in unexpected ways;   a Trotskyite mercenary with scrupulous morals; and at times a delib- erately bewildering sequence of events that lend the story an immediacy that may surprise you.