Tricia Sullivan - Lethe
As mentioned in my post about Maul I also picked up Tricia Sullivan’s 1995 debut novel Lethe at the same time.
Set in 2166, some 80 years after the devastating events known as the Gene Wars, Lethe presents the reader with a quite damaged world. Due to the the harsh climate remaining pure humans are forced to live in protected reservations under the control of the League of New Alchemists – an organization controlled by a small group of disembodied, networked brains known as the Heads.
Jenae Kim is doing research for the League together with the dolphins, with whom she can communicate telepathically after changing to an aquatic form known as Altermode. This research leads Jenae to stumble on a piece of significant information – knowledge which forces Jenae to flee outside the reach the heads.
Meanwhile, Daire Morales passes through an unexplored gateway at the mystercial celestial object dubbed Underkohling. What he finds is an Edenic world, populated by a small colony of human children and adolescents.
While it doesn’t make me want to throw superlatives around me, I must say Lethe is a solid, quite skillfully executed work. The characters are well defined and come through vividly. The story is intriguing and well laid out – using the term fast-paced would be an exaggeration, but it flows on well, with enough surprises to keep the interest up – and the future it is set in is well thought out. To put a label on it, I’d call it a dystopy (though with a glimmer of hope) half-way to hard sci-fi. In short, not much to complain about.
Availability suggests that it is out of print by now, but here are direct links to Amazon.com
In a mall, just like any other, Sun and her two friends get on the wrong foot with the wrong gang. What follows is a fight for survival on a battleground littered with trademarks.
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