Company Town

... 'rest in power'!

Oh my! This book is so unexpected that I'm still scrambling to catch up with and relive what went down.

Hwa is an amazing character. Her strengths and weaknesses, her very humanness in a world where people embrace bio-engineering stands in sharp contrast to those around her. Her world is narrowed down to a huge oil rig in the Atlantic Ocean off the Canadian coast--a city (Company Town) owned by a huge corporation: Lynch Ltd. ... and wasn't the original US nuclear testing site a prototype of 'the Company Town' ? Ah! the nefarious doings of large corporations rears it's ugly head!

Hired to be the bodyguard for Joel, the heir apparent and youngest of the 'family', Hwa comes face to face with truths that are disturbing. show more The drive and ambition of the family is both bizarre and frightening, Orwell's '1984' meets David Weber's 'Mesan Alignment' in the Harrington Books with, I don't know, perhaps some of 'The Matrix.' Let's face it Lynch Ltd. is one scary corporation, a corporation without ethics and driven by the few super people prototypes. Are they machine or human or neither? The lines certainly blur.

So you have this hive type community mind that is looking to control and tailor the responses and decisions of the heir apparent, Joel, but the non engineered Hwa, the organic is the X factor in the equation, the wild card--and therein lies her power! Her relationship with Joel is fascinating, as is that with Daniel. Who or what is Daniel? I am still trying to figure that out too.

So I loved this book and am unsure why. Maybe because that wild card kept frustrating the status quo, despite the personal tragedies that happen along the way. Hwa is a strong female lead that one can empathize with. Great character! She is in a fight for her very being, without ever realizing it.

Great stuff!

p.s. The dedication is timely. It speaks into the void. Thank you Madeline Ashby!

A NetGalley ARC show less

Picked this up for a few bucks from a store called Bookland in Vernon, BC and whew, what a ride. Company Town got a lot of attention in 2017 and I can see why: it's sharp, clever, and very Canadian. One of my pet peeves is Canadian authors setting their books in America so it was nice to see a futuristic Canada for once.

Company Town is set an indeterminate amount of time in the future, where the titular company town is an entire city settled on an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland, and almost everyone has genetic and technological modifications. Except Go Jung-Hwa. Hwa is half-Korean and all natural - no modifications or enhancements. This makes her the perfect bodyguard for fifteen-year-old Joel Lynch, heir to the corporation that show more just bought the rig.

So let's start with Hwa. At the beginning she works as a bodyguard for the Canadian sex workers union, protecting the women from any dodgy clients. She's a study in contrasts and has an intricately drawn realness to her, which in a novel about an almost post-human world is important. Having epilepsy and a port-wine stain on her face, Hwa has spent her life isolated, lack of money keeping her from indulging in the technological tweaks and tucks. She has her own wants and needs but is pragmatic, fully aware of the realities of her situation. She's a great character, perhaps even better than the story itself.

Company Town is a mishmash of genres yet also thoroughly Canadian. There's a cyberpunk element that merges with science fiction and even fantasy in some ways, creating an interesting world contained entirely on New Arcadia's rig. There's also plenty of violence, murder, artificial intelligence thought experiments, and possible time-travelling. It's a lot. Considering the American propensity to forget that Canada even exists in the future, simply ignoring it as they draw out their dystopian maps, it feels surprisingly fresh to have the novel set in Newfoundland, complete with slang that lets you hear the Newf accents hidden inside. Company Town does swing towards a little confusing at the end, all the answers coming at breakneck speed, almost too quick to process as you're reading, and might require some thinking about afterwards.

I read this directly after finishing [b:Son of a Trickster|30257957|Son of a Trickster|Eden Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1469407972s/30257957.jpg|50729928] and it made me feel hopeful about the future of CanLit (especially after my disappointment in major CanLit figures in the recent past). show less

Plot:
New Arcadia is a city and a huge oil rig off the Canadian coast run by the Lynch Company. Hwa is one of the many residents. She works as a bodyguard for the local escort services and the sex workers’ union. It’s pretty much the only work available to her, on the one hand because she is a martial arts expert, but on the other hand because she doesn’t have any bio-engineered augmentations like everybody else – Hwa has Sturge-Weber Syndrome and was never deemed worthy for investments like this by her mother. Those facts are also what bring her to the attention of the elderly head of the Lynch Company, Jonathan Lynch. His heir Joel is being threatened, so he hires Hwa as a bodyguard for him. Hwa’s loyalties are torn, though, show more as her former protegées are being murdered most gruesomely and she really needs to figure out what’s going on.

Ashby very much won me over with her previous novels, vN and iD. Company Town isn’t connected to those two, but shares with them a smart and in-depth look at a possible technological and political development from an innovative angle. I loved it.

Read more on my blog: https://kalafudra.com/2016/10/21/company-town-madeline-ashby/ show less

What I loved about this book:
The Newfie vernacular that was used.

The references to how traditional mining towns/oil towns were owned by the company and everything was owed to them by the citizens.

That her differences were not spelled out explicitly. It took time to learn who the MC was inside and out. The premise was very good.

What I did not like:

The abrupt to pat ending.

The author used the equivalent of the hole in space time, etc to get her character out of a bad situation without a happy ending. Another words wrote herself into a corner.

I don't know how to say this without feeling like a traitor to bookworms everywhere, but I think I would enjoy Company Town more as a tv show than a book.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the writing itself. Company Town has a fantastic story, a gripping plot, a compelling exploration of social issues, and a wonderful cast of characters (including the most kickass heroine I've read in awhile). It just so happens that the vast majority of the time, I would rather watch sci-fi than read it, and everything that I love about Company Town makes me feel that even more.

So, I guess that's the big disclaimer about my opinion of the book -- I liked it so much that it made me want to experience it in an alternative format. That show more makes no logical sense, but let's just go with it.

The things I love about this story include:
1. The union aspect. Admittedly, my experience with sci-fi books is limited (see: would rather watch a screen adaptation), but I haven't read much that involves labour relations.
2. It's not just labour relations -- this book also tackles environmentalism, corporate greed, sex work, privacy, bodily autonomy, and more. For such an intense book, this has an incredible amount of relevance to daily life today.
3. The diversity. This book has some pretty impressive representation for marginalized groups, including people of colour and people with disabilities. Sci-fi tv has a pretty big issue with character diversity, so this was refreshing to see.
4. Hwa. I don't always enjoy main characters with a brutal side, but oh my goodness, I love her.
5. This is a small thing, but I also adore the optometrist.

The whole time I was reading Company Town, I was thinking about quotes I've read where people talk about how ridiculous it is that when you're looking at sci-fi and fantasy -- genres with limitless potential -- stories seem to fall into the same tired stereotypes and tropes, plots seem subject to current social standards and biases. And why does that happen? Why can we envision a world with space travel but not a main character of colour? Why can we accept elves and orcs but not LGBT elves and orcs?

I feel like Company Town is if not a direct answer to that, then a solution, something that I'll recommend the next time someone asks for a sci-fi recommendation.

So, I guess that's where I stand on Company Town. There is so much that I love about the book, and there is so much that feel very needed. As far as personal enjoyment goes, I don't think this was the book for me, emphasis on book. Because wow, if there is ever some kind of gritty screen adaptation, I will be all. over. it. show less

New Arcadia is a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd and Hwa is one of the few people left who is purely human with no bio-engineered enhancements. When the youngest Lynch needs training and protection, the family turns to Hwa. But can even she protect against increasingly intense death threats seemingly coming from another timeline?
I loved the world, and the technology, everything here felt like it had weight and history and the city felt lived in and real.
I loved the way the book approached but the benefits and the consequences of rampant bio-engineering and body modification were touched on in a practical way, not a preachy way and to me show more paints a very scary look at one of our possible futures.
I really enjoyed Hwa, she isn't they stereotypical female hero in action stories, she has flaws and weaknesses but was also strong and new how to compensate for many of them,
Overall I found all of the characters and subcultures of New Arcadia to be fascinating and I wanted to meet more of them, spend more time with them and less with the characters attached to Lynch Ltd, I found all the characters fairly believable, I just enjoyed the every day citizens more.
My only real complaint about this book would be that the driving plot line, the death threats and the mystery of who was behind them felt a bit tacked on at points, it sometimes felt as if those story elements were only there to justify the exploration of the world of New Arcadia and in the end it felt like it was wrapped up a bit to neatly, a bit to quickly and conveniently.
Normally this would bother me a lot but I enjoyed the world and the characters to much to let that ruin the fun for me. This was a fun book and a definite page turner.

This is an author I plan to pay to keep an eye on for her future books. show less

There was a whole lot I really liked about this book. Set in Canada - in Newfoundland, with characters who have Newfie accents! Lots of people of colour, including our protagonist, Hwa. Lots of ladies, including Hwa. Disabled protagonist (Hwa has Sturge-Weber Syndrome, which causes a facial birthmark and seizures among other things). Respectful portrayal of sex workers. Great sci-fi setting. The writing was really engaging...I know it took me 8 days to finish it but that's just because I didn't have a lot of time to read this week! I was really invested in Hwa's life and really wanted everything to work out for her!

So - some spoilery things that I didn't love so much:

Despite the respectful portrayal of sex workers, they still were show more forced into some common tropes in that they were murdered to cause pain and story development for our protagonist. I don't think any of the sex workers that we met who were Hwa's clients/friends/family survived to the end of the book.

I was also kind of sad that Hwa got "fixed" at the end (even though she was also kind of sad about it). It was nice to read about someone with a disability who was super badass and strong, even though she kept putting herself down about it. Hwa's relationship with her mother kind of solidified her self-esteem but to look at her through Daniel's eyes, her strength and the way she carries herself are really her defining features. It would have been nice for her to start to value her strength and confidence and accept her disability as a part of her strength and awesomeness and not feel shitty about her birthmark, instead of just being cured. I don't know if there's going to be a sequel or anything but it would still be nice to imagine all of that!

Finally, I didn't really care for the ending. It was fine, I understood it, but it seemed a bit tacked-on that all of a sudden there was an inter-dimensional being who was the villain all along. I mean I liked his motivation but up to then there wasn't any indication of alternate timelines existing in this sci-fi universe or hints that it might have something to do with that? I mean I guess alternate timelines don't seem plausible until someone shows up from one but it felt a little of whatever the opposite of deus ex machina is. Diaboli ex machina? Anyway later there was still a deus ex machina with sexually transmitted blood nano-bots which I was fine with because I really didn't want Hwa to die. But none of the ending really diminished my enjoyment of the book!
show less