River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

Winslow Houndstooth was not a hero. There was nothing within him that cried out for justice or fame. He did not wear a white hat - he preferred his grey one, which didn't show the bloodstains. He could've been a hero, had he been properly motivated, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

Winslow Houndstooth has a bag of federal gold and a crew of mercenary hippo-wranglers. His job? To clear a Louisiana bayou overrun with dangerous feral hippos. The hippos aren't his only target, however. Also hiding in the bayou is the man who destroyed his life, and Winslow is after revenge.

A crime caper set in an alternative 1890s Louisiana with a diverse cast of hippo-riding cowboys? Exactly my kind of read! I loved the idea (and I love that it was inspired by an actual real thing that almost happened) and I think I would have come to adore the characters too. There was A LOT going on for a novella, though, and I'm not sure I completely followed what was happening and why. If only this had been longer with more time for character development, I'd have absolutely loved it!

Recommended For: Anyone looking for a fun and fast speculative fiction novella.

Read On: The second novella in the series is Taste of Marrow. Other great alt-history fantasies are His Majesty's Dragon by Noami Novik, and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

84K by Claire North

She had not seen the man called Theo in the cards, nor did they prophesy the meaning of her actions. When she called the ambulance they said they would come soon, and half an hour later she was still waiting by the water.

What if any crime could be committed without punishment, so long as you could afford to pay the fee assigned to that crime? Theo works in the Criminal Audit Office. He assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full. But when Theo's ex-lover Dani is killed, it's different. This is one death he can't let become merely an entry on a balance sheet. Because when the richest in the world are getting away with murder, sometimes the numbers just don't add up

So this was an odd one and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's a grim dystopia and there's a real sense of hopelessness and an uncaring passivity which is much more believable (and therefore unsettling) than the active cruelty and discrimination so often seen in dystopian stories. This is a recognisable England in which ambulances only turn up after they check your credit rating, and prisoners pay off their debt to society by working in factories. I was quickly absorbed in the story and really wanted to know what happened even though I knew from the first page that there would likely not be any happy endings. This is not that type of book.

However, the writing style was hard work. It was written in a dreamy way, full of half-sentences and partly finished thoughts, which was a little off-putting. Also, the narrative kept slipping from one timeline to another without any warning. Lastly, I'm not sure that I liked the lack of resolution at the end.

Recommended For: Anyone looking for a disquieting dystopian novel written in a unique style

Read On: 1984 by George Orwell is the ultimate dystopian novel. Other more modern novels set in a capitalist dystopia are Autonomous by Annalee Newitz and Jennifer Government by Max Barry.