An interesting, dystopian science fiction novel. Quite well-written, with an interesting world/future dystopia. It didn't fully click for me, but there's a lot to like in here. I'd be interested in reading more by the author.

In a gritty, apocalyptic-like future, a mechanic by the name of Sol steals vehicles in order to come up with the necessary parts to fix his customer's vehicles. When he rips-off a luxury model he comes away with more than just a source of parts for his shop ... Sol finds a three-armed woman whose mind has been wiped clean from her previous existence and she's been modified to become a bodyguard for a wealthy Londoner who wants her back. But the woman, called 'Y', doesn't wish to go. Sol and Y become privy to a vast, dark world of human trafficking through different worlds and their lives are on the line as traffickers and hitmen are tracking them down.

It is no surprise that this book was a Philip K. Dick Award nominee - this has so many of the elements we often found in Dick's books (such as the confused hero and the unusual character who acts as the catalyst for the danger that the confused hero faces).

The book catches the reader with a specific mood, drawing us into a gritty, dirty world, more <em>Alien</em> with its griminess than sterile <em>2001</em>. And everything everything feels unfortunately much too real. Hill has created a world in which the reader can practically smell the garbage.

I like this kind of dystopian fiction, but to make it really work, the characters really need to be alive to the reader and Sol, unfortunately, is not, for me. He plays his role of disaffected anti-hero a bit too well and I just don't care about what he's doing.

'Y,' on the other hand, is fascinating but we don't get quite enough of her to make up for what we get (but don't care about) for Sol. Perhaps it's the mystery of her - what we don't know because Hill only teases us about her - that makes her so intriguing. But I feel this is really Y's story but not presented as such.

I happened to finish reading this at a time when human sex trafficking was the lead story in the daily news for awhile, which made this story even more relevant, sad, and frightening.

Overall, this book fails to really catch on, despite the gritty, real world and the intrigue surrounding the modified, trafficked woman, Y.

Looking for a good book? <em>Graft</em>, by Matt Hill, has a great dystopian world and a fantastic premise, but gets lost behind a rather dull main character.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

2015 in Manchester is not a place and time you want to be, if you read Matt Hill's book GRAFT. The story about Sol and Y is sometimes hard to get into, and sometimes really accesible. Although that might also be a personal thing, which depended on my own state of mind; I read the book in a few readings, and wasn’t always the most awake. Which might have lead to me DREAMING about someone with three arms! But I digress.

What I liked, but what others might not enjoy as much, is that many things stay vague. How has the world collapsed into something post-apocalyptic in just 10 years? How does the changing of humans into something else work? Where do they come from? How is the rest of the UK faring? The rest of Europe? The world? I enjoy the slowly finding out what there is to find out, and still having questions at the end, because that is how life works; you don’t get anything in a clearcut package.

I loved how the story was structured. How you got to read about Sol and his work in one chapter, and seem to be in a completely different world in the next, following Y after she wakes up and has no memory of what has come before. Different characters are introduced, and their tales connect. That does work well, except in one case. On the whole, I feel like the role Mel plays seems a bit too fabricated, like she was added on later because some of her functions were needed. However, I did like her as a character/person and would like to know more about her. The same goes for many characters in the book: The Irish, Roy, the Reverend, The Manor Lord.

This book only scratches the surface of this possible future. Will there be more? I’d like it if there was.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25489099-graft?" target="_blank">Graft</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/matthewhill" target="_blank">Matt Hill</a> will be published on the 2nd of February by <a href="http://angryrobotbooks.com/" target="_blank">Angry Robot Books</a>.

I tried to find reasons to like this book and I spent my time hoping it'd get better and I figured out that the main thing I liked is that none of the female characters died. That doesn't really negate my personal annoyance that Y was the virgin and Mel the whore and they were too easily archetypes. There was just no character growth, no attempt at empathy and it felt like a non-stop parade of opaque violence. The sci-fi was far better than the dystopia but the grit was too much.