Hot on the heels of last month’s US paperback release, E.J. Swift‘s superb debut, OSIRIS is now also available in paperback in the UK! (Published by Del Rey UK.)
OSIRIS is the first book in Swift’s Osiris Project science fiction series. The sequel, CATAVEIRO, is due to be published in February 2014.
In case you’ve missed our previous coverage of the novel (or been living under a rock), here is the synopsis…
Nobody leaves Osiris.
Adelaide Rechnov – Wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, she spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family in a series of jaded social extravagances and scandals until her twin brother disappears in mysterious circumstances.
Vikram Bai – He lives in the Western Quarter, home to the poor descendants of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. His people live with cold and starvation, but the coming brutal winter promises civil unrest, and a return to the riots of previous years.
As tensions rise in the city, can Adelaide and Vikram bridge the divide at the heart of Osiris before conspiracies bring them to the edge of disaster?
And, also, here is some of the great critical response OSIRIS has enjoyed…
‘Marvelously well done. A glittering first novel: a kind of flooded Gormenghast treated with the alienated polish of DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. The result is a gripping novel, beautiful, politically engaged and wholly accomplished. Swift is a ridiculously talented writer… the fact that it’s her first novel is belied by how accomplished and well-written it is.’ — Adam Roberts
‘At a time when writing the far future novels is harder and harder Swift does it with style, brains and heart. OSIRIS is a fine mix of mystery and apocalyptic intrigue on a human scale.’ — Richard Kadrey (author of Sandman Slim)
‘A fantastic blend of world-building, excellent storytelling and complex characters… An engrossing story from start to finish… Osiris would still be good if all it had was world-building, but it offers so much more by way of plot and storytelling. The thrust of the narrative is the motivation of the characters… forces readers to ask themselves what it would take to spur them to action. Now combine this with the other interesting elements of the book like political intrigue, subterfuge, the way the story is told from alternating viewpoints… and you can see why OSIRIS shines. It’s that kind of impressive storytelling that makes OSIRIS hard to put down, and when you have to put it down, something that you remain eager to pick up again.’ — SF Signal
‘What a bare summary of the novel’s premise obscures is the amount of space Swift creates for her protagonists to simply live in their world and experience it for us – in other words, how textured the novel is. The world-building has a playfully oceanic flavor throughout… but is most compelling when it is sketching out the psychology of Osiris’ citizens. Small episodes, such as an interlude on a freshwater iceberg during which Vikram muses that the slap of waves must be what land sounds like, or the “ground dreams” experienced by many citizens, underline that the sea here is all-encompassing: everything comes from it and returns to it. It’s the sea that catches the city’s ghosts, and the sea that gives the city’s criminal justice system its cues, from the underwater prisons to the official method of execution… Swift demonstrates a much more sophisticated control of pace and tone, an ability to rapidly shift gears within scenes, and a willingness to undercut one scene with another: most notably, the prologue removes ambiguity from one of the major questions facing the protagonists and requires Swift to show one character in particular as much more obsessive and less sympathetic than would otherwise be the case. In the end it’s that choice, perhaps, more than anything else in this nuanced, intriguing, occasionally frustrating book, that makes me think Night Shade have found another worthy writer…’ — LA Review of Books
