The Sanctuary (SF) - Andrew Hunter Murray *****

Part way through the first act of this explicitly three-act SF novel, I was finding things distinctly depressing. (But there's better news to come.) The first person protagonist, a portrait artist named Ben, lives in a low-key dystopian future for a country that is never explicitly identified, though is fairly obviously England. Cities are in decay, the economy seems to be pretty much non-existent and the only places that are pleasant to live in are Villages (with a capital V) - walled communities where old rich people are waited on hand on foot by the young poor.

Andrew Hunter Murray has a very cool, detached, almost period writing style - combined with the dismal setting (it's never really explained how we get from where we are now to this miserable future) made the first act difficult to engage with - but the whole feel of the book changes with the second act when the action moves to a private island - the sanctuary of the book's title. This is an apparently utopian society, constructed by the billionaire behind the Villages. Ben manages to get to the island (half-killing himself in the process) to see his fiancée who works there - he expects to hate the place, but initially he finds it beguiling.

The key characters that Ben encounters on the island are surely derived from The Tempest. The Prospero figure is John Pemberley, the billionaire who set up the island, who is even described as a magician, and is accompanied by his daughter, Bianca (the Miranda figure, who only knows life on the island). He has two main supporters - an Ariel equivalent in the scientist Angela, and Caliban represented by the security chief Munro, who only really seems to be in the book to make sure that Caliban is represented as he has very little part to play in the plot. But Ben's growing relationship with John and Bianca, combined with a well-thought through utopian environment really elevates the interest - especially as cracks start emerge and as Ben tries to uncover John's background and what is really happening on the island and how this will change the world at large.

If there is an element of The Tempest here, it is inverted - rather than the shipwrecked sailors transforming Miranda's view of the world, ultimately the book is driven by the Prospero figure's plans - and the 'brave new world' here is the island itself, not the rest of the world. We travel with Ben mentally as he unravels the darker side of the utopia and how it is shaped by John's origin story. The two big denouements at the end of the final act are reasonably well flagged up in advance, so the reader may well be able to predict the ending, though there is at least one unpredictable twist.

All in all, despite a slightly underwhelming start, as soon as Ben reaches the island this book soars and it never loses impetus from then on. It's a thoughtful, impressive science fiction thriller.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here