A rare, searing portrayal of the future of climate change in South
Asia. A streetrat turned revolutionary and the disillusioned hacker son
of a politician try to take down a ruthlessly technocratic government
that sacrifices its poorest citizens to build its utopia.
The South Asian Province is split in two. Uplanders lead luxurious lives
inside a climate-controlled biodome, dependent on technology and gene
therapy to keep them healthy and youthful forever. Outside, the poor and
forgotten scrape by with discarded black-market robotics, a society of
poverty-stricken cyborgs struggling to survive in slums threatened by
rising sea levels, unbreathable air, and deadly superbugs.
Ashiva works for the Red Hand, an underground network of revolutionaries
fighting the government, which is run by a merciless computer algorithm
that dictates every citizen's fate. She's a smuggler with the best
robotic arm and cybernetic enhancements the slums can offer, and her
cargo includes the most vulnerable of the city's abandoned children.
When Ashiva crosses paths with the brilliant hacker Riz-Ali, a
privileged Uplander who finds himself embroiled in the Red Hand's
dangerous activities, they uncover a horrifying conspiracy that the
government will do anything to bury. From armed guardians kidnapping
children to massive robots flattening the slums, to a pandemic that
threatens to sweep through the city like wildfire, Ashiva and Riz-Ali
will have to put aside their differences in order to fight the system
and save the communities they love from destruction.
