No Place Like Place Joanna Lamprey Book
by Joanna Lamprey

Storyline

FUN RETRO SETTING FOR STEAM-DRIVEN FUTURE WORLD

"There's steam, but it isn't steampunk. There's a Western feel to it, but it isn't a space western. I like both of those. I loved this."

A laughing love affair was the very last thing Abby expected to enjoy on Place, an unfashionable planet with a tiny mining community. She’d been told the community had a decidedly retro lifestyle, that the bugs were as long as your arm*, the camels looked as though they were on steroids, and the neighbours were stone-age goblins, but no-one had mentioned that not all the inhabitants were eccentric. Her doctor had tried to offer a thread of hope when he recommended Place; life in a dead-and-alive backwater was her last chance of life at all. Young, spirited, not prepared to write off her only option without a fight, she reluctantly agreed. She hadn’t expected to find a life that would utterly delight her.

She also hadn’t been told about the Talia, because no-one knew about them. They were several thousand years away in space and time, and no-one in Place would ever suspect their existence, but the Talia were even more interested in Place than she was.

This light-hearted serial novel, first in a mini-series of three, introduces the eccentricities and absurdities of a life set in a future our great-grandchildren will know, but lived in a way our great-grandparents would have found more familiar.

The Talian story is entirely separate and the sections headed with their spaceship can be skipped by those who find them distracting. SF fans, though, should enjoy the double thread, and they do weave together in a rather unexpected way.

*Don’t fret about the bugs. They’re dormant for a few months every year and therefore don’t appear in this first episode.

Excerpt: ‘You’ve forgotten what things are like on Earth,’ she reminded him primly. ‘Pre-treated food in portion sizes, biodegradably wrapped, and available in nine tasty flavours. I’ve had to get used to squishy slabs of real meat, fish with bones and eyes, lumpy roots and gourds, and about six new fruit options. Now I’m riding an animal which would frighten an Earth child into fits, through wild countryside with not a house in sight, on my way to meet a purple goblin. On the way back my lover is going to make me dig under giant decaying insects for handfuls of eggs which will hatch into incredibly gross worms. It’s a little bit of a culture shock.’

‘Ain’t it great? You can’t say I’m not showing you a good time. Nothing but the best for my Abby.