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A Strange and Brilliant Light: Winner of the Writers’ Guild Best First Novel Award

On sale

17th February 2022

Price: £8.99

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Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781529407747

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WINNER of the WRITERS’ GUILD BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD: A riveting, thought-provoking speculative literary novel exploring the impact of the AI revolution through the eyes of three very different young women.

Lal, Janetta and Rose are living in a time of flux. Technological advance has brought huge financial rewards to those with power, but large swathes of the population are losing their jobs to artificial intelligence, or auts, as they’re called. Unemployment is high, discontent is rife and rumours are swirling. Many feel robbed – not just of their livelihoods, but of their hopes for the future.

Lal is languishing in her role at a coffee shop and feeling overshadowed by her quietly brilliant sister, Janetta, whose Ph.D. is focused on making auts empathetic. Even Rose, Lal’s best friend, has found a sense of purpose in charismatic up-and-coming politician Alek.

When vigilantes break in to the coffee shop and destroy their new coffee-making aut, it sets in motion a chain of events that will pull the three young women in very different directions.

Change is coming – change that will launch humankind into a new era. If Rose, Lal and Janetta can find a way to combine their burgeoning talents, they might just end up setting the course of history.

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Reviews

FANFIADDICT
If you like small, intimate fiction that asks very big questions, this is the perfect novel for you
FINANCIAL TIMES
Smoothly written
MUSE'S BOOK JOURNAL
a beautifully written, thought provoking novel
GWYNETH JONES, author of the Arthur C. Clarke-winning BOLD AS LOVE
A disquieting take on Big Tech's plans for the future of work
CAROLE STIVERS, bestselling author of THE MOTHER CODE
Mind-bending
LISA TUTTLE, The Guardian
Important ideas are wrapped in an absorbing, character-driven novel that's also a thought-provoking consideration of the ways we might cope with something that is already happening all around us.
SFBOOK REVIEWS
Fans of relational narratives will enjoy the interactions of the three protagonists while there is also intellectual AI debate for those science fiction readers more drawn to ideas over people
BLUE BOOK BALLOON
Lee gives the reader a massive amount to ponder as well as delivering a brilliantly written and absorbing story about some very real people
A LITTLE HAZE BOOK BLOG
Incredibly thought provoking
SFX MAGAZINE
This is a thoughtful, interior-focused story...like Ishiguro's Klara And The Sun
SFCROWSNEST
A slickly written and enjoyable novel
PAR SEC MAGAZINE
Thoughtful... provides much food for thought
BOOKS IN STEEL CITY
Lee has created a story that feels relevant and poignant for a world on the brink of automating so many parts of our working lives
THERESA SMITH WRITES
A thought-provoking novel
BOOKS BY YOUR BEDSIDE
Eli Lee can write description and emotion beautifully
BSFA
Often bleak, A Strange and Brilliant Light is also sad, hopeful, funny, and brilliant, such that I expect to see it on a lot of award lists. This quiet, thoughtful novel, almost entirely led by flawed but amazing women, has a lot to say about the world we're about to be living in. It will, I hope, inspire many to think long and hard about what we want our future to be like.