First off, I loved this! The short novel (130 pages) is dystopia, climate change warning, hard Sci Fi, and philosophy all rolled into one, and it didn’t feel at all forced, despite the low word count. Ostensibly a near-future story of a young Chinese girl growing up the time of cataclysmic environmental disaster, and learning her path as an architect (Visionary) of humanity’s future, it is perfectly timed and pitched for a modern audience. The tech at the beginning (‘smartbands’ and the over reliance on data) is believable, as are the allusions to the ‘dragon’ which caused the catastrophe, and a world where philosophy and religion are at once central and apart from the needs of society.
Using Chinese, American and Icelandic characters who I could accept as genuinely being from those specific backgrounds, working together (and against) each other both supports the one world philosophy around the creation of ‘Tion,’ a new home for humanity, but also avoids some of the more usual homogeneity of a multicultural team where differences are defined by little more than names. If anything, I would have enjoyed a little more of this, as the jumps in the timeline mean the transition of Xin-yi from a very localised Chinese province to Bonn, for example, isn’t really explored.
The style reminds me a little of Jack London’s The Iron Heel, which I also love, with a narrative that doesn’t really know or understand how people lived before ‘The Flood,’ and high-concept queries around the existence and death of God, and there is more than a hint of Orson Scott Card in places.
This is obviously a prequel and setup to the much larger ‘Tion’ sequence that comes after, and does the perfect job of making you want to see what happens next, although it is to the author’s credit that the book stands equally well on its own.
In one or two cases there are slightly over-familiar tropes, and a tendency from the Hard Sci-Fi influence to make up new words towards the end, though in the main this is done cleverly, and fits with what I presume will be a standardised hybrid language in the following novels. The brevity is refreshing and works, but this results in some of the supporting characters being a little one dimensional, and the key relationship with ‘Tej’ (no spoilers) is frustratingly under explored on several occasions, as is the shadowy Takahashi from ‘The Company,’ so we never really learn about their motivations, leaving them to be slightly as McGuffins.
It’s been quite a while since I came across a book so refreshing in blending different and quite specific genres, and doing it so well. The rest of the Tion sequence will be added to my (admittedly huge) TBR pile.
From the pitch
At the beginning of February 2060, Mount Erebus erupted, the first of a chain of Antarctic volcanoes that forever changed Earth’s future. Within days, sea levels began to rise, until sixty metres of water claimed coastlines worldwide.
Twelve-year-old Xin-yi and her mother fled their home, surviving amongst a community of rice farmers. A year later, a chance conversation with international census officials prepared her for a new life.
Now fourteen, Xin-yi commences her training as a visionary. It is her task to imagine a new Earth, rising above the drowning waters. Thousands of young people strive to design a world in which the displaced millions can live, and engineer a solution that will take a millennium to populate.
But Xin-yi’s challenges are more personal: coming to terms with the loss of her brother and unexpected feelings toward a friend. She has to choose between working to benefit humanity and her internal conflict with love.
Set over three decades after the 2060 flood, The Visionary combines dystopian, future and science fiction, and introduces J.C. Gemmell’s Tion series.
Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Visionary-Dystopian-Sci-Fi-Tion-ebook/dp/B08YFCKZ4S/
Stay Safe
Kit