Review: Tomorrow’s Children, by Daniel Polansky

ABOUT THE BOOK

Tomorrow, the funk descends on Manhattan, a noxious cloud which separates the island from the rest of the world and mutates the population.

Generations on, the surviving population exists amid the rubble of modernity, wearing our cast-off clothing, worshipping celebrities as dim gods and using emojis in place of written language. The Island exists in a state of uneasy peace, with each neighbourhood an independent fiefdom, protecting itself with scrap metal spears and Molotov cocktails.

But something new has come to the Island, the first tourist in centuries, and this uneasy equilibrium is about to shatter…

My Review

Thanks to Amy at Angry Robot for sending me a copy of this book and arranging the blog tour.

My goodness me! This is a quite vigorous book. I read it in one go, on a sick day. My chair was comfortable, I had food and tea, and medication to deal with the headache, stuffy nose and sore throat. Accidentally left my inhaler upstairs, so I couldn’t move about much or the coughing fits happened. So I didn’t. I curled up in my chair and read.

We have two groups of protagonists, Gillian, Swan, Slim, and Ariadne, who, officially, work for the Council, investigating the crimes of the second group, Hope, Chisel, The Kid and Ael, who work for some unknown entity. Then there’s Newton, a child of the Enclave, guarded by multiple men and his nanny Fran for a man he calls Uncle.

There are explosions, murders, and duplicity, and the first group chase the second group, and Newton is kidnapped. There are deeper currents at work and everyone is trapped in the workings. It’s a long game for someone…

Meanwhile, someone has arrived from the outside world, a man and his small but highly armed army, to find out what’s happening on the island. This man is a government agent and his plan is to reopen a tunnel from the mainland to the island, then kill everyone on the island to ‘retake’ it.

The description of Manhattan after several generations of being cut off from the world and stuck under a cloud that mutates people is quite colourful. The population has divided into tribal groups based on the place they live and the general atmosphere and culture of the areas. There’s a community that worships Beyonce as Queen in Yellow. They have a whole bee theme going on. There are pseudo-Vikings and hippies. There’s a cat woman and leather boys in a Sacred Band. There are a group of engineers that live in nets beneath a bridge and develop new technology.

The language used, both spoken and written, is one of the unusual aspects of the book. The writing is emojis, which I struggled to interpret at times, but the language, the slang especially, is understandable. Slang is a hard thing to fast forward, because language changes can be a bit unpredictable. I did understand that. The outside perspective of the tourist shows us how much the level of general cultural knowledge and formal education has changed in comparison to the world outside. The slang used is an indication of the changes in culture and education in the population. I loved some of the slang, but some of it was a bit over the top.

The plan, organised, we learn, by Gillian and her son, to bring down the Hive and get revenge on the Enclave for events in the past, is accelerated by the arrival of the tourist. The plan is then extended to destroy the tourist and his army, block the tunnel, all while starting a war between the gangs that run the Island. It’s a fun and twisty plot, and I really enjoyed unravelling it and working out what was going on.

I enjoyed this book, once I got into the story, I couldn’t put the book down. It was really good.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Daniel Polansky is a baker and writer living in Los
Angeles. His works include the Low Town trilogy, the Empty Throne duology, A City Dreaming, the 7th Perfection, the Hugo-nominated novella The Builders, and 2023’s March’s End.