Wolves
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A chilling literary dystopia for those who love Iain Banks and JG Ballard.
Conrad is desperate for an escape after a devastating accident changes his way of life. When his childhood friend, Michel, invites him to come and see the boat that he and his partner are refurbishing, Conrad sees his chance to leave it all behind. But rekindling their friendship unearths old fears and dangerous secrets, and Conrad is soon desperate to flee again.
Through it all, Conrad becomes ever more entrenched in Augmented Reality - living in worlds dreamt up by other people. But as the floodwaters rise, and he hits the limits of imagined worlds, he is forced to confront the new realities before him - a flooded country and a horrific secret buried in his own past.
A searing mix of literary horror, murder mystery and dystopia, Wolves is a fierce and uncompromising look at greed, technology and climate collapse - and the wolves at the centre of it all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The advent of augmented reality occurs amid doomsday preparation in British author Ings's dark near-future bildungs roman. In an unnamed European city, friends Conrad and Ralf design wearable technology that overlays 3-D images onto reality. Some decry this intrusion into public space, but others see it as the wave of the future, and wealthy investor Bryon Vaux offers to purchase Conrad and Ralf's company. Conrad recognizes Vaux as a disturbing figure from his past and flashes back to his childhood growing up in his parents' dilapidated hotel. His father made sensory vests for blind veterans; his erratic mother, Sara, disappeared; and his best friend, Michel, was preparing for the fall of civilization. When Sara was found dead in the trunk of the family car, young Conrad took drastic action. Ings infuses his dystopia with harsh descriptions of abandoned landscapes; Michel, who disdains his bleak surroundings, is obsessed with building a boat to survive the end times. Slowly creeping toward a society of virtual experiences, the story provides mystery with vivid references to water, floods, and the characters' persistent pursuit of detachment from reality.
