A Strange and Brilliant Light: Winner of the Writers’ Guild Best First Novel Award

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What to expect

WINNER of the WRITERS' GUILD BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD! A riveting, thought-provoking speculative literary novel exploring the impact of the AI revolution through the eyes of three very different young women.

Lal, Janetta and Rose are living in a time of flux. Technological advance has brought huge financial rewards to those with power, but large swathes of the population are losing their jobs to artificial intelligence, or auts, as they're called. Unemployment is high, discontent is rife and rumours are swirling. Many feel robbed - not just of their livelihoods, but of their hopes for the future.

Lal is languishing in her role at a coffee shop and feeling overshadowed by her quietly brilliant sister, Janetta, whose Ph.D. is focused on making auts empathetic. Even Rose, Lal's best friend, has found a sense of purpose in charismatic up-and-coming politician Alek.

When vigilantes break in to the coffee shop and destroy their new coffee-making aut, it sets in motion a chain of events that will pull the three young women in very different directions.

Change is coming - change that will launch humankind into a new era. If Rose, Lal and Janetta can find a way to combine their burgeoning talents, they might just end up setting the course of history.

(P)2021 Quercus Editions Limited

Critics Review

Important ideas are wrapped in an absorbing, character-driven novel that's also a thought-provoking consideration of the ways we might cope with something that is already happening all around us.
LISA TUTTLE, The Guardian
Mind-bending
CAROLE STIVERS, bestselling author of THE MOTHER CODE
A disquieting take on Big Tech's plans for the future of work
GWYNETH JONES, author of the Arthur C. Clarke-winning BOLD AS LOVE
If you like small, intimate fiction that asks very big questions, this is the perfect novel for you
FANFIADDICT
Smoothly written
FINANCIAL TIMES
a beautifully written, thought provoking novel
MUSE'S BOOK JOURNAL
Fans of relational narratives will enjoy the interactions of the three protagonists while there is also intellectual AI debate for those science fiction readers more drawn to ideas over people
SFBOOK REVIEWS
Lee gives the reader a massive amount to ponder as well as delivering a brilliantly written and absorbing story about some very real people
BLUE BOOK BALLOON
Incredibly thought provoking
A LITTLE HAZE BOOK BLOG
This is a thoughtful, interior-focused story...like Ishiguro's Klara And The Sun
SFX MAGAZINE
A slickly written and enjoyable novel
SFCROWSNEST
Thoughtful... provides much food for thought
PAR SEC MAGAZINE
Lee has created a story that feels relevant and poignant for a world on the brink of automating so many parts of our working lives
BOOKS IN STEEL CITY
A thought-provoking novel
THERESA SMITH WRITES
Eli Lee can write description and emotion beautifully
BOOKS BY YOUR BEDSIDE
Eli Lee has done a remarkable job revealing the human side of AI . . . Often bleak, A Strange and Brilliant Light is also sad, hopeful, funny, and brilliant, such that I expect to see it on a lot of award lists. It will, I hope, inspire many to think long and hard about what we want our future to be like
THE BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION REVIEW
Often bleak, A Strange and Brilliant Light is also sad, hopeful, funny, and brilliant, such that I expect to see it on a lot of award lists. This quiet, thoughtful novel, almost entirely led by flawed but amazing women, has a lot to say about the world we're about to be living in. It will, I hope, inspire many to think long and hard about what we want our future to be like.
BSFA

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