Summerland

I find fiction books to read from a really wide variety of sources and my list is amazingly long, but I’m reading more than ever (thanks to staying off of social media more) and I’m trying new things a lot of the time. Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi was recommended by Warren Ellis in his newsletter. (I fear people are going to get sick of me talking about Ellis, but his newsletter and book recommendations are always so great.)

Summerland is a spy story with a twist. People don’t die anymore, if they have a ticket, they go to Summerland where you can live forever. So fear of death isn’t a motivating factor. The British control Summerland where Queen Victoria still rules. The book takes place in 1938 and we follow Rachel who works for the intelligence service trying to track down a mole.

I really enjoyed this book because it was constantly revealing new things to me. It took quite a while to figure out who all the players in the intelligence world were, who was Britain fighting against? Who was the mole working for? And it ended with a bang, which is always great in a spy story.