Bold as Love

By Gwyneth Jones

Book Overview

P. K. Dick and Triptree Award-winning author Gwyneth Jones delivers a rock-and-roll fable set in a dystopic near-future England.

Dissolution Summer: the soon to-be former UK was desperate. The world was in the grip of a fearsome economic depression. The anti-globalization movement threatenedstability throughout Europe, supported by rioting youth, bitterly disaffected voters, and encroaching environmental doom.

The Home Secretary decided to recruit a Countercultural Think Tank: pop stars would make the government look too cool to be overthrown. His girlfriend, club promoter and music biz socialite Allie Marlowe, filled his shopping cart for him with such indie notables as Ax Preston, the soft-spoken biracial guitar virtuoso; Aoxomoxoa (aka Sage Pender), techno-wizard king of the lads; and Fiorinda Slater, the baby punk-diva with a horrendous past.

It was just another publicity stunt for the rockers, until the shooting began. Now Slater and her friends must find a way to stay alive and overthrow the dominant social order, while the UK disintegrates under their feet. Will rock-and-roll's revolutionary promise finally deliver, or will ethnic violence drown hippie idealism in rivers of blood? Either way, the world will never be the same.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1597800023
• ISBN13: 9781597800020
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Night Shade Books
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Super Reader

This is another of those 'how the h*ll did she think of this books'? On the face of it, you might think it would be either a) ludicrous, or b) inordinately soppy. It ain't either. I don't know how Jones did it, but she did. Even escapes nicking Hendrix' titles. In a little bit in the future England, things are falling apart. So much so that the musical counterculture again has political clout, and so much so that a rockstar of the violent bent stages a coup. That does not end well, and this brings to the fore the classic Arthurian trio of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. Or, in this case, Ax Preston (got to have a guitar player, right?), Fiorinda Slater, and Sage Pender. With a severe energy crisis looming, and a fractured country and war with the muslims coming, and the standard government completely useless these three must try and use their musical and other talents to get everyone through. With the decline of most technology, the rise of just that bit of mystical power is coming.