By Tim Major

Titan, out now

A Britain run by Charmers that has isolated itself from the rest of the world – linked to a very special ability…

Tim Major’s alternate Britain novel very carefully doles out its backstory to the reader, and it would be insulting to the hard work that he’s put into this to give away everything in the review. All you need to know going in is that what seem initially – certainly in the first couple of chapters – to be anachronistic mistakes are anything but. This is a Britain that took a right turn at a key point in its history and Major has extrapolated carefully how that would affect certain aspects of our lives that we take for granted.

There are three principal strands in the story – following a teenager who has her first shedding at the start of the book, creating another version of herself that should, by all accounts, disintegrate into ash within seconds… but doesn’t; a civil servant whose relationship with his minister boss takes an unusual turn; and a journalist who wants to get to the bottom of the origins of current British society. These gradually intertwine as the nature of events becomes clearer both to the participants and to the reader, and Major doesn’t pull any punches in his descriptions of some of the nastier moments along the way.

It’s an intriguing piece of worldbuilding with so many questions raised over how things are viewed from outside the UK that I’d love to read a story set in this world but from the other side of the border. It’s certainly a world that deserves further exploration – always the mark of an enjoyable novel.

Verdict: Neatly plotted and characterised, this is a enjoyable SF horror tale. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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