This is the beginning of a series.
Set in post-apocalyptic flooded England (similar idea to Ship Breaker, but very different feel) there are 10 remaining counties of England, ruled by an idiotic Prime Minister - everything else has been lost to the sea or to Greater Scotland. (Imagine this set in America, with everything north of the Mason-Dixon Line suddenly part of Expanded Canada. What shock! What horror!)
Anyway - the poor suckers stuck in those last Ten Counties suffer mostly in silence, working fishing boats and trying to keep up with their taxes. Technology is forbidden. Up north, the sinful Scots use all sorts of tech, but they're in league with the devil, so that's why.
Lilly and her seacat only want a nice peaceful fisher life - her, her seacat, and her sweetheart Andy (who will hopefully marry her and still let her go fishing!) living together until the far future. Yeah right.
Raiders attack, stealing the PM's daughter (who was stowed at the fishing village with her exiled aunt), and Lilly sets off on a quest to retrieve the girl and save her village from impression or hanging from the asanine PM himself. (Getting the impression throughout this book that the author isn't too fond of politicians.)
In the alternate viewpoint, Zeph is the younger son of the boss of the Angel Isling gang of raiders. They fled London in the great flooding, and now they prowl around, stealing from the Scots and the fishing villages alike ("no one helped us escape, so we don't owe them any loyalty" is the idea here). Family is everything, and life is brutal, with slaves and captives galore, and turf-wars over status and position. His dad just stole the PM's daughter! The Boss is actually looking forward to starting a war with the PM - he can't wait to fight it out and prove once and for all that the Raiders are the true Englishmen!
By some miracle, Lilly and Zeph, along with the seacat and an intriguing "jewel," meet up with each other and have to figure out how to survive the chaos wrought by one small theft of one small girl.
Not a world-stopping read - there were some technical difficulties. There were some really interesting characters picked up and then dropped nearly instantly (Lilly's "uncle" comes to mind) but with a series, I'm willing to give that a chance to repair itself over time (still, for a single installment, it was a bit abrupt). The plot was strangely herky-jerky, and more than a tad unrealistic in all of the chance meetings and lucky breaks - but so is most juvenile fiction. Even the world was strangely ad hoc - the PM and bureaucrats were described as well off, but if all they have is a tiny collection of fishing villages, where does that come from? Likewise, despite religious protestations and enforced borders, technology from Scotland wouldn't be entirely unknown to desperate natives just a few miles down the pike. Similarly, London itself is totally flooded - or maybe just a muddy mess, or maybe only flooded at high tide. Lots of questions unanswered about how things work in this world.
I did appreciate that the dual narratives were very clear and demonstrably different. I really like knowing who is "speaking" from the very first, and clear character concepts are absolutely necessary for that sort of writing convention. Also - seacats. Great idea. I love cats, and the idea of strange little grey kittens latching on to someone and helping them navigate over undersea obstacles and by forcasting weather changes - really neat concept!
Overall, pretty good - Not an amazing read, but I am looking forward to the sequel.
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