Unity

Product Description
“Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling, demonstrating both the disciplined development of a long-gestated project and the raw, dynamic flashes of an author’s early work. It shows intense interest in the distance between conversation and communion . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride.” ―New York Times“A vivid, fascinating, and utterly believable future world . . . Echoes of Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon or the Netflix series Sense8.” ―New York Journal of Books\nDanae is not only herself. She is concealing a connection to a grieving collective inside of her body. But while she labors as a tech servant in the dangerous underwater enclave of Bloom City, her fractured self cannot mend. In a desperate escape, Danae and her lover Naoto hire the enigmatic ex-mercenary Alexei to guide them out of the imploding city.\nBut for Danae to reunify, the three new fugitives will have to flee across the otherworldly beauty of the postapocalyptic Southwest. Meanwhile, Danae's warlord enemy, the Duke, and a strange new foe, the Borrower, already seek them at any price.\nEvoking the gritty cyberpunk of
Mad Max and the fluid idealism of
Sense8,
Unity is a spectacular new re-envisioning of humanity. Breakout author Elly Bangs has created an expressive, philosophical, science-fiction thriller that expands upon consciousness itself.
Review
Washington Post Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror of 2021London Times April 2021 Science Fiction PickAurealis Best Speculative Fiction of 2021\n“
Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling, demonstrating both the disciplined development of a long-gestated project and the raw, dynamic flashes of an author’s early work. It shows intense interest in the distance between conversation and communion . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride.”
―
New York Times\n“Breakneck pacing, non-stop action, and delightfully-damaged characters combine with some of the most intricate and clever worldbuilding I've seen in ages to make this an incredibly memorable debut.”
―Sam J. Miller, author of
The Art of Starving\n“
Unity is a wild firefight of a novel . . . Elly Bangs is a writer of both kaleidoscopic imagination and deep literary empathy, a cyberpunk star in the making.”
―Omar El Akkad, author of
American War\n“Imagine
Neuromancer and
Lilith's Brood conceived a baby while listening to
My Chemical Romance and then that baby was adopted by
Ghost in the Shell and
Blue Submarine no. 6. The baby’s name is
Unity.”
―Meredith Russo, author of
If I Were Your Girl\n“Chock-full of both big ideas and high-energy action, Bangs’s thrilling debut centers on a mad chase across a dystopian Earth in search of a collective consciousness that could save humanity from itself. Danae works as an often overlooked tech servant to a criminal syndicate that controls an underwater metropolis, but she is secretly a severed piece of a group mind that encompasses hundreds of people. Determined to get back to her larger self, she hires Alexei, a mercenary with a death-wish, to help her escape her employers. With Danae’s lover, Naoto, tagging along, the trio flees the city and heads to what was once Arizona―but they are doggedly pursued by bounty hunters and a shadowy figure from Danae’s past. . . . This gritty, thought-provoking cyberpunk adventure does the genre justice.”
―
Publishers Weekly\n“Elly Bangs has created a vivid, fascinating, and utterly believable future world, and she immerses the reader into it skillfully and seamlessly . . . Echoes of Richard K. Morgan’s
Altered Carbon or the Netflix series
Sense8, but this is an entirely original and ambitious creation.”
―
New York Journal of Books\n“
Unity is a gorgeous post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel about relationships and civilisational collapse. It builds slowly, almost randomly, to what I felt to be a satisfying conclusion, showing that even the most hopeless situations can be overcome as long as even one person refuses to believe the future is