Melanie Harding-Shaw

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/would-she-be-gone-by-melanie-harding-shaw/

A short bleak dystopian satire set in a world where literature is under state control, and the apparatus of government security forces is used to stop people from encountering dangerous ideas, striking through their families. Hits quite hard.

A Novella in the "Censored City" series, WOULD SHE BE GONE packs a big punch in a short, sharp delivery. A dystopian future awaits, where the Librarian Algorithm enforces censorship of stories and words that could cause trauma or crime (not a future I can get on board with at all). In this world Detective Virginia Wright goes undercover in the criminal world of performance poetry to hunt down a suspected ring of illegal open-access ereader suppliers. Fragile since the death of her mother, show more separated from her family on purpose, her world falls apart when they are arrested for literary solicitation - providing the words written by her mother in particular.

Now I will admit that I'm normally more than a bit disinterested in dystopian futuristic stories, they aren't my cup of tea at all, but WOULD SHE BE GONE worked for me. Partially it's because it's cleverly constructed, particularly given the shortness of the novella, to provide character development and personal background information, alongside a good plot that is part detective thriller, part dystopian horror, part sticking it to the authorities. There's touches of humour, sadness, romantic attraction and more than enough intrigue to keep you guessing.
The Censored City series consists this far of WOULD SHE BE GONE - Part 1, COMPACT OF FIRE - Part 2 and HELL IS EMPTY - Part 3. Parts 2 and 3 are now on the to be read list.

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