Forgive me for having a bit of a fan girl moment but today I am shouting about one of my favourite authors and, contrary to what you might be expecting, she is not a HF author; in fact she writes something quite different. I suppose you’d call it Dystopian sci-fi or Post-apocalyptic – I am not sure.
I read my first Terry Tyler book, Tipping Point, several years ago. It is not my usual genre and I had no idea what to expect. I don’t even remember why I picked it up, but I am a bit of a lightweight when it comes to fiction, give me a nice healthy execution and I can deal with it, but the cold terror of social collapse chills me to the bone. The events in Terry Tyler’s novels are terrifying because everything she describes seems completely plausible. That might be down to Tyler’s skill as an author, or it might be due to current political situation. I read them way before the first COVID 19 outbreak so you can imagine that once the real pandemic was underway early in 2020, I began to wonder if Terry Tyler was some sort of seer.
As soon as I put Tipping Point down, I searched for her other books and read them all, one after the other in a sort of fascinated, horrified trance. I wasn’t disappointed, even after reading twenty of her books. When I put them down and look around at my stodgy domesticity, I am comforted because global social collapse hasn’t happened yet and there is time to prevent it.
The Project Renova series are my favourites, with The Operation Galton books running a close second. The people you meet in this ruinous world are recognisable, familiar – they are your friends or your worst enemies. They are real, totally convincing.
Her earlier books served as a balm to my nerves. They are more mainstream but so well done, so slickly painted that I recognised the world, the padded shoulders and slimey-toad, yuppie world that I escaped in the early 90s to take refuge in the wilds of Wales.
I was drawn to The House of York because of the title and enjoyed the way she deftly plucked characters from the wars of the roses and dropped them into a modern setting. You might not expect that to work but it does, brilliantly with all the back stabbing shenanegans you'd expect. These books, completely different from the Renova and Galton books, are equally as absorbing with that delicious underlying darkness at which this author excels.
As a reader, my criteria is strong plot and realistic characters and every book in her catalogue offers that. Terry Tyler is a skilled author. She is deft, easy to read, she is not fancy, she does not try to sound clever, she is concise, and she is never, ever boring. After the first few pages, the reader is sucked into either a dystopian nightmare or plunged into a world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. She makes you believe, and she does it seemingly effortlessly.
Megacity, which after all is the book I am supposed to be discussing, is her latest and it is no less brilliant. I don’t want to reveal much of the plot, I hate spoilers in a review but if you are anything like me, when you read these books, you will believe dystopia is just around the corner and sign up and join the resistance. Perhaps that is what we all need. As with the other books in the series, Megacity is clever in its simplicity and terrifying in its plausibility.
What are you waiting for? Read one, you will want to read the rest. I have just one question for Terry Tyler … when is the next one out?
Megacity
Blurb
The UK's new megacities: contented citizens relieved of the burden of home ownership, living in eco-friendly communities. Total surveillance has all but wiped out criminal activity, and biometric sensor implants detect illness even before symptoms are apparent.
That's the hype. Scratch the surface, and darker stories emerge.
Tara is offered the chance to become a princess amongst media influencers—as long as she keeps quiet and does as she's told.
Aileen uproots to the megacity with some reluctance, but none of her misgivings prepare her for the situation she will face: a mother's worst nightmare.
Radar has survived gang rule in group homes for the homeless, prison and bereavement, and jumps at the chance to live a 'normal' life. But at what cost?
For all three, the price of living in a megacity may prove too high.
Megacity is the third and final book in the dystopian Operation Galton trilogy, and is Terry Tyler's twenty-third publication.
'As long as some of us are still living free, they have not yet won. Anyone who refuses to live as they want us to has beaten them. That's how we do it. That's how we win.'
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