Nekropolis

Rating:
Summary: McHugh's best novel to date
Review: With the same gritty reality Mission Child and China Mountain, Nekropolis lets the reader experience life as a believable person in a future world gone wrong. In clean and vivid first person narration, we hear of the courage and compassion of seemingly ordinary people as they struggle with the bizarre cirumstances of their lives.

Rating:
Summary: Moving story of future slavery and love
Review: _Nekropolis_ is an excellent novel. It's about a young woman in near future Morocco, Hariba, who becomes "jessed": her brain chemistry is altered to make her more loyal to a given person -- and she is "sold" as a house servant to a rich man to whom her loyalty is transferred. There she meets a "harni", or "chimera" (the term "harni" turns out to refer to chimeras with a specific function, and to have a derogatory aspect, but Hariba doesn't know this), named Akhmim. "Harnis" are genetically engineered humans, who have been bred to be loyal and compliant to their masters. In a sense, then, they are bred to be "jessed". After some resentment of the harni, Hariba falls in love. After that she is sold to a new, poorer, owner, and her desperation at losing Akhmim leads her to run away, which in turn makes her very ill, a side effect of resistant the compulsions of her "jessing".

The story is told from four POV's, serially, beginning with Hariba, then Akhmim, then Hariba's mother, then Hariba's best friend, then returning to Hariba. The plot follows the consequences of Hariba's running away, and of Akhmim feeling compelled to join her in this escape. Eventually they must try to leave Morocco altogether. But the plot is not the point of the book -- rather, McHugh is mainly showing us the characters of Hariba and her mother and friend, who are all from the slum area of Fez called the Nekropolis, and how their lives, and those of their families, have been constrained by poverty; and then, even more importantly, the character of Akhmim, and the ways in which he is and is not human, and how that affects his relationship with Hariba. It is at times a very sad novel, yet also quite full of hope -- the future Morocco portrayed is not a particularly wonderful place, but the future Europe portrayed seems quite nice, really. The characters are beautifully realized, and always people we believe in, and want to know better. This is definitely one of the best SF books of 2001 - probably really a 4.5 star book.

Rating:
Summary: Moving story of future slavery and love
Review: _Nekropolis_ is an excellent novel. It's about a young woman in near future Morocco, Hariba, who becomes "jessed": her brain chemistry is altered to make her more loyal to a given person -- and she is "sold" as a house servant to a rich man to whom her loyalty is transferred. There she meets a "harni", or "chimera" (the term "harni" turns out to refer to chimeras with a specific function, and to have a derogatory aspect, but Hariba doesn't know this), named Akhmim. "Harnis" are genetically engineered humans, who have been bred to be loyal and compliant to their masters. In a sense, then, they are bred to be "jessed". After some resentment of the harni, Hariba falls in love. After that she is sold to a new, poorer, owner, and her desperation at losing Akhmim leads her to run away, which in turn makes her very ill, a side effect of resistant the compulsions of her "jessing".

The story is told from four POV's, serially, beginning with Hariba, then Akhmim, then Hariba's mother, then Hariba's best friend, then returning to Hariba. The plot follows the consequences of Hariba's running away, and of Akhmim feeling compelled to join her in this escape. Eventually they must try to leave Morocco altogether. But the plot is not the point of the book -- rather, McHugh is mainly showing us the characters of Hariba and her mother and friend, who are all from the slum area of Fez called the Nekropolis, and how their lives, and those of their families, have been constrained by poverty; and then, even more importantly, the character of Akhmim, and the ways in which he is and is not human, and how that affects his relationship with Hariba. It is at times a very sad novel, yet also quite full of hope -- the future Morocco portrayed is not a particularly wonderful place, but the future Europe portrayed seems quite nice, really. The characters are beautifully realized, and always people we believe in, and want to know better. This is definitely one of the best SF books of 2001 - probably really a 4.5 star book.