http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2018/02/review-of-graft-by-matt-hill.html ( )

Review from Tenacious Reader: http://www.tenaciousreader.com/2016/03/01/review-graft-by-matt-hill/

Graft by Matt Hill is a vivid, visceral dystopia. This futuristic world is dark and dangerous and Hill does not hold back on showing us just how dismal things can get.

Sol is a mechanic who steals cars. But on this latest run, the car he acquires has a little more than he bargained for. Inside the trunk is a woman. She can not speak and her mouth is stapled shut. Oh, and she has a third arm. We come to know her as Y. It turns out that Y is quite valuable to someone and is goods for a trafficking ring. This puts her and Sol in way more danger than if he had just stolen a car. But in this dark and damaged world, Sol is quick to try and protect Y, so rather than just hand her over or ditch her some where, he tries to help her.

There are some interesting things going on in this book. Body augmentation, trafficking, a dark underworld, hijacking cars, etc. etc. It’s interesting, but I think some aspects of it crossed what I refer to as my “weird threshold” (yeah, OK. I am pathetic, but oh well). I read this book, and could definitely see how some others would appreciate it more than I did, but I can’t help that my enjoyment was not where I had hoped it would be.

I think there’s probably the possibility to read some deeper themes in this one, which I normally enjoy. But honestly I don’t think I connected enough to get there. ( )

This review and others posted over at my blog.

The year is 2025. Sol is a mechanic in Manchester who steals cars to repurpose them to his customer’s specifications or sell them for parts. But when his partner steals a luxury car and Sol finds a woman with three arms who was made to another customer’s specifications, he realizes he’s in way over his head. As Sol and the three armed woman run from her traffickers, Sol learns about her past and soon gives up all he has to help her.

I have really, really mixed feelings about this book. Through about the first half to two-thirds of the book, I was really into it. Hill created a gritty, futuristic, semi-apocalyptic Manchester where things we take for granted (working vehicles, internet, phones, food, jobs) are a hot commodity and life is tough for all but the richest. There’s also a group of people who modify humans and mix them with machines to create a new breed of people modded to the wishes of the client.

As a character, I could take or leave Sol. Actually, the only character I was really interested in throughout the book was Y, the three armed woman. She had her mind wiped when she was abducted and modded into a fighting machine with three arms and no voice. I wanted to know more about her past and I wanted to know more about the people that designed her.

This book posed the question – could our society become one where human trafficking evolves into modifying the captured people into android-hybrids and selling them fully customized like you would a computer or a phone? (A scary thought, if you ask me, because I’d like to say this would never happen but….) Sol explores this question somewhat with his own feelings and his quest to help Y discover her past and destroy her makers.

Sadly, as the two of them delved further into their adventure and the book headed towards its conclusion, it lost me. As the action progressed I began to lose the imagery and the plot. I felt lost and I know I was having a hard time picturing what Hill was trying to convey. I had no idea where Sol and Y were at the end, and in reading the back of the book again, I just caught the word ‘trans-dimensional.’ That sheds a little light on my confusion – somehow they must have travelled between dimensions, but I honestly have no clue how and that just leaves me with more questions about the world building.

As I neared the conclusion of the book I seriously lost interest and I suspect this only added to my confusion about what was actually going on. I couldn’t follow the exposition properly and I just wanted the book to be over. I even took a couple days off from it to clear my head with some middle-grade.

Overall, I can’t say I would really recommend this book, but perhaps the subject matter was over my head? That being said, I would give Hill another chance, because I did like his writing style, even if he lost me at the end. And I will give it an A+ in the cover design department – I can’t stop staring at this book, even now. ( )

Manchester, 2025. Real food is scarce. Public services are run by crime syndicates. Drones guard the motorways. And someone is trafficking people across dimensions, stealing their memories, their voices, their names in the pursuit of profit. As dystopian near-futures go, Graft cuts close to the bone in every sense.

Matt Hill is a brave man, choosing to write about a future so near we can almost smell it. If The Folded Man was quite clearly an alternate present by the time I got my hands on it, Graft still feels a little too possible, a nightmare feeding on the horrors of the present: disposable people being stripped of humanity in a world that turns a blind eye.

Y doesn't know where she came from. She's been rebuilt as state of the art biotech, her body adapted for strength and speed, her training turning her into a sentient weapon that acts on reflex. She has no idea what she's capable of, meekly following orders. But she's defective: neither the drugs nor the routine can eradicate her empathy. She slips out of her cradle at night to comfort the other voiceless, nameless subjects around her.

Sol is a washed-up car mechanic with a history of running from his troubles. He and his partner Irish work on the wrong side of the law, if the law still cared; stealing cars and buying blackmarket materials. When Irish jacks a posh Lexus, Sol is mostly worried it's too easy to track. When he opens the boot to discover a three-armed woman bound inside it, her lips stapled together, he knows it means more trouble than they can deal with. But even Sol's humanity is not so eroded as to let him just close the boot.

Their dystopian journey is familiar: a pair of misfits and their tarnished allies forge an unlikely connection and fight against a corrupt system. While the over-arching narrative is by the numbers, Matt Hill makes it his own with his elegant prose and his focus on the losses that drive his protagonists, the outcome always uncertain. Parallel timelines grope towards one another as a past tense narrative reveals Y's journey between worlds and the present follows Sol's flailing efforts to do the right thing.

Ultimately, I think Graft is flawed - there are some inconsistencies (see my full review), plus a certain simplistic predictability at the climax - but I found it mostly gripping and I suspect I'll get more out of it on a second read (which I can see myself giving it).

I've said before that I thought Matt Hill was one to watch: I will keep watching.

I received a free electronic ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( )