Title: Europe in Autumn
Author: Hutchinson, Dave
Published by: Solaris
Year: 2014
First published: Solaris, 2014
Date reviewed: 09.15
ISBN: 978 1 78108 195 2

This is the first book in a planned trilogy. The second volume, “Europe at Midnight“, is due out in November 2015.

“Europe in Autumn” is set in a dysfunctional Europe not too far in the future. The open borders ideal has collapsed under growing pressures of migration, austerity, nationalism and more, the EU has fallen apart and Europe is fragmenting into micro-states and polities as disparate groups declare independence from their previous nation states. Some of these are idealistic, others just criminal.

Operating across this bewildering and dangerous continent is a shadowy group known as the Coureurs des Bois whose business is ‘delivering’ (read ‘smuggling’) things and people across the increasingly complex system of borders. The central character of the book – Rudi – gets drawn into this network but then finds himself in danger and his life under threat. His efforts to discover who is behind this and why he is being targeted form the core of the book, and the central idea behind the plot gradually emerges.

I don’t read much science fiction, but this is certainly an intriguing and imaginative story. It ends on a cliffhanger, lining up the next volume nicely. I shall definitely be reading it when it’s published.

One final note – the European response to the Greek debt problems and the ‘migration crisis’ of the summer of 2015 seem to show an astonishing prescience on Hutchinson’s part. It’s a worrying thought.