The North Awakens

The United Kingdom, 2061. Question nothing. Dream of nothing.

Twenty-five years after the riots that nearly tore the country apart, the Shield Party rules from four glass towers in Canary Wharf. Rationed freedom, an algorithm that tells the nation what to believe. It works, mostly. So long as no one asks the wrong question. So long as the payments keep flowing to the USA.

The gallows are British. The hands on the strings are not.

Sian Taylor, the new Home Secretary, is about to ask the wrong question. She calls an election against the woman who saved the country.

Desperate to keep her son Adaf safe, she sends him north to Northumberland. He arrives among outcasts expecting monsters. What he finds is a community hiding something, a girl he can’t stop thinking about, and a lie that could break the government.

Sian and Adaf must stay alive long enough to drag the truth into the light. But the Shield Party has different ideas, and a cold, charming insider is playing both sides.

The United Kingdom is about to discover what happens when people start to dream again.