Reset
A Novel
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- ¥1,100
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- ¥1,100
発行者による作品情報
Can you love someone you don’t remember?
After the Last War destroyed most of the world, survivors form a new society in four self-sustaining cities in the Mojave Desert. In the utopia of the Four Cities, inspired by the lyrics of “Imagine” and Buddhist philosophy, everything is carefully planned and controlled: the seasons, the weather—and the residents. To prevent mankind from destroying each other again, its citizens undergo a memory wipe every four years in a process called tabula rasa, a blank slate, to remove learned prejudices. With each new cycle, they begin again with new names, jobs, homes, and lives. No memories. No attachments. No wars.
Aris, a scientist who shuns love, embraces tabula rasa and the excitement of unknown futures. Walling herself off from emotional attachments, she sees relationships as pointless and avoids deep connections. But she is haunted by a recurring dream that becomes more frequent and vivid as time passes. After meeting Benja, a handsome free-spirited writer who believes his dreams of a past lover are memories, her world is turned upside down. Obsessed with finding the Dreamers, a secret organization thought to have a way to recover memories, Benja draws her down a dangerous path toward the past. When Metis, the leader of the Dreamers, appears in Aris’s life, everything she believes falls to pieces. With little time left before the next tabula rasa, they begin a bittersweet romance, navigating love in a world where names, lives, and moments are systematically destroyed.
Thought-provoking and emotionally resonant, Reset will make you consider the haunting reality of love and loss, and the indelible marks they leave behind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Love transcends the laws of a dystopian world in Dahlan's immersive debut. War and climate disaster left Earth devastated beyond repair—until a savior called the Planner established a new civilization for the survivors in four cities of his design. To preserve peace and eliminate prejudice, the Planner implemented a policy called Tabula Rasa: every four years, the citizens' memories are wiped, allowing them "the freedom to author their own souls." An indefinite number of four-year cycles later, Aris, a scientist, is keen not to form any attachments, as all relationships come with expiration dates. But that changes when her fanciful companion, Benja, ropes Aris into a wild chase for the Dreamers, an underground group that believes dreams contain forbidden memories from past cycles. And when Aris meets the leader of the Dreamers, Metis, their connection is undeniable—but to be together, they'll have to escape Tabula Rasa. Dahlan seamlessly marries sci-fi and romance while building a heady atmosphere through ethereal, dreamlike prose. When the plot widens from the intimate story to the bigger picture, however, it over-relies on abstract metaphysical concepts to hand wave away plot holes. Still, the original concept and propulsive love story mark Dahlan as a writer to watch. Readers will be mesmerized.
