Green City Wars by Adrian TchaikovskyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Skotch, a freelance raccoon investigator is tasked by his former employers, big corp Uzco, to bring in the fugitive mouse scientist, Dr Meece. The problem is, every single animal faction in the city (and from the country) is also trying to get their hands on Meece. Not necessarily alive. Oh, AND they all think that Skotch knows where he is. What's a raccoon to do to stay alive?
The fun part of this story is obviously the world building. This isn't one of those completely anthropomorphic animal stories like Redwall or the Farthing Wood series where the animals are given human attributes and speech just because.
These animals are artificially engineered by humans to be smart and tasked to run human green cities from the shadows. All the undesirable jobs that are looked down upon? Animals do them, from turtles to rats to mice and racoons. But it's also nature vs artificial intelligence, where sometimes sheer animal instinct overrides the intelligence gifted to them by science (also known as plangent). There are scientific repercussions and rules that govern these societies - the most important of which, Rule Number One, is to not involve the humans.
It's first and foremost, though, a PI story - in a rather old-school, hard-boiled detective noir style. Dark, gritty, with a main protagonist that keeps talking at you. Which, unfortunately, is a style I rather dislike. Still, the plot itself, while simple, unfolds in a complex maze with revelation upon revelation, hooking you again at just the right time to go "hhmmm just a bit more". It also starts off slow, but picks up as more and more factions try to get in on the action. There's a "last stand" scene that reminds me of Colin Dann's Battle for the Park - beautiful and tragic and perfect.
I'd actually recommend this more for noir readers than sci-fi, because whilst the science is important and underpins the whole thing (you cannot actually take out the science worldbuilding and be left with ANY story), it kind of comes second to the tone of the story.
Note: I received a digital ARC of this book from PanMacmillan/Tor via NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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