The Pale centres around the fallout from a cataclysmic earthquake, which affects many different groups in a post-apocalyptic society: settlers, tribes, canini, and the modified humans of the Pale.

The Pale itself is a walled city populated with humachines: humans who have been augmented with technology in order to become more efficient citizens. Genetic breeding is commonplace. Those who are no longer considered worthy of 'upgrades' are 'recycled', and this is considered perfectly normal to the inhabitants of the Pale. The fortress-like city is run by a Regent devoid of empathy, who rules with a tyrant’s fist. Rhoden’s impressive prose captures the Regent's nuances well.

“The Regent was exhibiting her particular brand of brilliant anger. Jaxon watched with some admiration as sparks erupted from the anthracite curls of her lashes, and her brows flashed arcs of light. Most alarming of all, Jaxon noticed, was the ripple of power that flowed over her skin, as if her body was insufficient to contain the emotion that roiled through her blood, that jagged through every biowire and agitated every nerve.”

In true dystopian style, The Pale looks into the future to show where our own obsession with technology might lead us. A thought-provoking read reminiscent of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Pale raises many questions as to what it truly means to be human. ( )

Imagine a landscape more forbidding than Central Australia, the Sahara, the Atacana desert. A landscape still shifting with the after shocks of a cataclysmic event that, 197 years before The Pale begins, destroyed most species. Clare Rhoden quickly establishes this ghastly world in our minds. At the same time she moves the narrative along with fascinating characters to care about.

'How does anything live out there?' Tad murmured.

Serviceman Tad patrols the Pale, the last place left that bears any resemblance to a city. Within the walls exist - you can hardly say 'live' - a hierarchical society of citizens who, like Tad, are partly liveware (tissue) and partly hardware. The Pale has wholly adopted technology and rationality as its survival mechanism. Subservience by the citizens to the poli-cosmos is the order of the day. (I think it no accident that the author's use of 'policosmos' without a hyphen somehow gives it an overtone of 'police state'.) Even so, there are unsettling signs in at least two Servicemen, Tad and his protégé Hector, of the Pre-catalcym human trait deemed most dangerous: empathy. The story of how this 'weakness' affects the Pale could have made a good novel in itself, I think, but Clare Rhoden interweaves it with so much more.

Outside the Pale, somehow life clings on. Here subsist the humans (fully liveware) of the Settlement. In their zeal to live up to Pre-cataclysmic ideals they have turned to biology. Strict breeding protocols result in a caste system. Beyond the Settlement roam Tribes. Some tribespeople have close bonds with the packs of Canini, wolf-like creatures. I defy any reader to not be fascinated by the Canini. Their codes and imperatives also serve as a contrast with the humans. All living things fear the Ferals, hybrids of biology and machine, a nightmare offspring of the former technological world. These scour the plains hunting biofuel i.e. flesh.

I particularly liked the depiction of how the mentality, society and even biology of humans could evolve to accomodate the need to survive and also to try to eliminate the weaknesses and disasters of Pre-Cataclysm humanity. In some dystopian stories all we really see, I think, is the last angry male humans mindlessly fighting each other to the last club and bullet. Here, to my relief, and I’m sure yours too, we have leaders, mostly female, relying on mutual respect, discussion, and the cross seeding of ideas between groups. This intelligent and thought provoking series looks at how the best attributes of we humans, empathy, hope, kindness, can have the power to lift us above struggle and misery. ( )

It took a while for me to get into this book. The world was very different from anything I've read, which actually is a good thing! I like a challenge from time to time. The lead characters changed often, moving the story along, but it did make it a bit hard to really care about them as individuals. There are some time jumps, too. I finished the book feeling satisfied having read it. ( )