Company Town, by Madeline Ashby
For her third novel, futurist Madeline Ashby has taken a break from her excellent Machine Dynasty series with the standalone novel Company Town. Set in the near future on New Arcadia, an oil-rig-turned-city somewhere off the coast of Atlantic Canada, it follows Go Jung-hwa, a young, cynical bodyguard for the United Sex Workers of Canada, and one of New Arcadia’s few citizens who has not been subject to genetic engineering or received implants of any kind. When the family run-company Lynch Ltd. buys New Arcadia, she finds herself offered the job of protecting Joel Lynch, youngest member of the Lynch family and heir apparent, who has been receiving death threats. Not long after taking the job, someone starts murdering people from Hwa’s former life. Company Town blends themes, genres, and concepts for some extremely successful world-building. Ashby gives us a frontier-town noir thriller that features social progress in attitudes about… Continue Reading