I thought that, because I had read the first two books in Claire North’s Songs of Penelope series, that I had a handle on what Claire North’s writing was like.

Ha ha ha.

Ha ha.

Yeah no, turns out. 84K has been on my TBR list for a long time, and I was killing time in the library recently when I saw it just sitting there. So, fate dictated that I must pick it up. And I started reading it, and … oh my.

This is completely different from Songs of Penelope, is the first thing to say. People who go from this to ancient mythological Greece must have their heads spin, because doing it in the reverse did so to me.

This is not-too-far future England; this is nightmarish capitalism, business and government together, with basically no difference between them, and the literal end-point of the idea of human resources. Justice is privatised beyond even what the USA currently does; every crime has a cost, determined by accountants based on the societal worth of the victim (she was trash) and the perpetrator (he has a very promising swimming career ahead of him). This is people refusing to see what has been done to their society, in their name, while they get some personal gain from it; and just occasionally someone saying Enough.

This was a hard book to read, mostly for the subject matter. It’s not entirely unrelenting but it’s pretty close. North is doing a lot here, and really, really wants you to think about what’s happening. I can imagine this being compared to The Handmaid’s Tale and other stories that project from current events, and take political horror to its grim logical conclusion. It’s a totalitarian society where most people don’t realise it; it’s business being far more important than humans; it’s the personal cost of defying a society where most members don’t see a problem. And those things just don’t feel that far away anymore.

It’s also occasionally hard to read from a structural point of view; again, Songs of Penelope did not prepare me for a non-linear narrative structure. There, it really wouldn’t have worked; here… well. North is a poet; she is a skilled weaver of stories; she layers meaning on meaning and idea on idea so that by the time the story brings you back to the starting point, you’ve got so much knowledge and awareness of what’s going on that you’re close to bursting.

This is a phenomenal book. It deserved all of the accolades. (I’m still glad I read Songs of Penelope first.)