We Lived on the Horizon
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jan 14, 2025
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The acclaimed author of the “dazzling” (Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Book of Speculation returns with an engrossing new novel about a bio-prosthetic surgeon and her personal AI as they are drawn into a revolution.
The city of Bulwark is aptly named: a walled city built to protect and preserve the people who managed to survive a series of great cataclysms, Bulwark was founded on a system where sacrifice is rewarded by the AI that runs the city. Over generations, an elite class has evolved from the descendants of those who gave up the most to found mankind’s last stronghold, called the Sainted.
Saint Enita Malovis, long accustomed to luxury, feels the end of her life and decades of work as a bio-prosthetist approaching. The lone practitioner of her art, Enita is determined to preserve her legacy and decides to create a physical being, called Nix, filled with her knowledge and experience. In the midst of her project, a fellow Sainted is brutally murdered and the city AI inexplicably erases the event from its data. Soon, Enita and Nix are drawn into the growing war that could change everything between Bulwark’s hidden underclass and the programs that impose and maintain order.
A complex, imaginative, and unforgettable novel, We Lived on the Horizon grapples with concepts as varied as the human desire for utopia, body horror, and what the future holds for humanity and machine alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Septuagenarian ex-lovers and their AI child are forced to make some heart-wrenching decisions in this brilliant dystopian novel from Swyler (Light from Other Stars). The postapocalyptic city-state of Bulwark is run by the penny-pinching algorithm Parallax, which divides limited resources between workers and the privileged "Sainted," members of Bulwark's oldest families. Heroine Enita, aka "Saint Stitch-Skin," has devoted her life to growing body parts from nanofilaments for workers who regularly lose limbs, but can't afford to be treated in the hospital. When one of her fellow Sainted is found murdered, Enita's ex, Helen, a historian, reads the writing on the wall and begins planning her and Enita's escape from a city on the brink of revolt. Complicating matters is Nix, the android Enita fashioned in Helen's image who is both her scientific legacy (Nix has already mastered the art of growing feet in fish tanks filled with exotic gel) and a stand-in child. Then lounge singer Neren is maimed in an accident. Enita repairs her, not realizing that Neren is a "Body Martyr," with fanatical beliefs and ties to the revolutionary underground—and she takes an intense interest in Nix. Swyler's elegant, polyphonic narrative juggles many themes, foremost among them human-robot convergence, through ever-shifting perspectives. Nix's voice as they describe their burgeoning consciousness is especially impressive. This is a powerhouse.
