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    Graft
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    Graft
    Unavailable
    Graft
    Ebook451 pages6 hours

    Graft

    By Matt Hill

    2.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Manchester, 2025. Local mechanic Sol steals old vehicles to meet the demand for spares. But when Sol’s partner impulsively jacks a luxury model, Sol finds himself caught up in a nightmarish trans-dimensional human trafficking conspiracy.

    Hidden in the stolen car is a voiceless, three-armed woman called Y. She’s had her memory removed and undertaken a harrowing journey into a world she only vaguely recognises. And someone waiting in the UK expects her delivery at all costs.

    Now Sol and Y are on the run from both Y’s traffickers and the organisation’s faithful products. With the help of a dangerous triggerman and Sol’s ex, they must uncover the true, terrifying extent of the trafficking operation, or it’s all over.

    Not that there was much hope to start with.

    A novel about the horror of exploitation and the weight of love, Graft imagines a country in which too many people are only worth what’s on their price tag.

    File Under: Science Fiction [ Y the Last Girl / So Much to Answer For / Under the Skin / Armed & Dangerous ]
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAngry Robot
    Release dateFeb 2, 2016
    ISBN9780857665003
    Unavailable
    Graft

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    Reviews for Graft

    2.5/5

    13 ratings1 review

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    • 3/5

      Feb 5, 2016

      Manchester, 2025. Real food is scarce. Public services are run by crime syndicates. Drones guard the motorways. And someone is trafficking people across dimensions, stealing their memories, their voices, their names in the pursuit of profit. As dystopian near-futures go, Graft cuts close to the bone in every sense.

      Matt Hill is a brave man, choosing to write about a future so near we can almost smell it. If The Folded Man was quite clearly an alternate present by the time I got my hands on it, Graft still feels a little too possible, a nightmare feeding on the horrors of the present: disposable people being stripped of humanity in a world that turns a blind eye.

      Y doesn't know where she came from. She's been rebuilt as state of the art biotech, her body adapted for strength and speed, her training turning her into a sentient weapon that acts on reflex. She has no idea what she's capable of, meekly following orders. But she's defective: neither the drugs nor the routine can eradicate her empathy. She slips out of her cradle at night to comfort the other voiceless, nameless subjects around her.

      Sol is a washed-up car mechanic with a history of running from his troubles. He and his partner Irish work on the wrong side of the law, if the law still cared; stealing cars and buying blackmarket materials. When Irish jacks a posh Lexus, Sol is mostly worried it's too easy to track. When he opens the boot to discover a three-armed woman bound inside it, her lips stapled together, he knows it means more trouble than they can deal with. But even Sol's humanity is not so eroded as to let him just close the boot.

      Their dystopian journey is familiar: a pair of misfits and their tarnished allies forge an unlikely connection and fight against a corrupt system. While the over-arching narrative is by the numbers, Matt Hill makes it his own with his elegant prose and his focus on the losses that drive his protagonists, the outcome always uncertain. Parallel timelines grope towards one another as a past tense narrative reveals Y's journey between worlds and the present follows Sol's flailing efforts to do the right thing.

      Ultimately, I think Graft is flawed - there are some inconsistencies (see my full review), plus a certain simplistic predictability at the climax - but I found it mostly gripping and I suspect I'll get more out of it on a second read (which I can see myself giving it).

      I've said before that I thought Matt Hill was one to watch: I will keep watching.

      I received a free electronic ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.