What if Thoreau and Emerson were weaned on manga and jungle music culture? A sprawling spiritual sci-fi set at High Noon, with an earnest and humanist respect for the variables and vicissitudes of modern-day life. Quite a bit to unpack, but it moves rapidly (much like the kinetic BPMs of our protagonist’s favored musical genre, the convulsive D'n'B and jungle of 90s England) and there’s a real tenderness to the tentative love story between two very uncommon teenagers. There’s a nice cinematic quality to the novel, as well as a sense of foreboding in the general societal direction of developed nations. But unlike much of the current fad for dystopia, there’s also a deep respect for the consistent resilience of the human race - well past any technological fetishism, the heart and soul (of which there’s plenty on display here) seems to be the venerable idea that hope dies last, and that the appreciation and extolling of the beauty that surrounds us, in endlessly modifying forms, may just save us all.