It’s hard to know how to classify this novel (not something I like to do, but it does make things easier if we have some frame of reference): dystopian future fiction, certainly, with a nod to steampunk. There are layers of interlocking mysteries here, small ones and large ones - Sparrow’s origins are one of the most important, because she doesn’t know where she came from, or even what she is. One, Mick Skinner, is following his own agenda - or running from something - and the other, Frances, has an agenda that’s no secret at all: she’s out to get Tom Worecski, the Horseman who put together Doomsday. It as a cabal of Horsemen who pushed the button, and now a couple of them have come to town. Into Sparrow’s more-or-less comfortable existence (“more-or-less” because Sparrow is subject to blackouts during which her body goes about business as usual - she thinks) drop a couple of the Horsemen - agents developed as spies and black ops experts, they have the ability to occupy others’ bodies. The economy is barter or runs on the Deal, a system of debts and obligations that serves to keep things in balance. The authorities also have a monopoly on energy. This is post Apocalypse, known here as the Bang, when someone pushed the button, and information from before is subject to seizure by the authorities.
The narrator is Sparrow, who is a finder of old videotapes, with some expertise in electronics. Suffice it to say that it’s been long enough that when the Chief asked me for a new review of the new edition, it was like coming to it almost fresh. I’m not going to tell you how long it’s been since I first read Emma Bull’s Bone Dance.
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