Today I’m joining the blog tour for The Cure. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

Living forever can be lethal…

Ruth is a law-abiding elder, working out her national service, but she has secrets.

Her tireless research into the disease that killed her young daughter had an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a vaccine against old age. Just one jab a year reverses your biological clock, guaranteeing a long, healthy life.

But Ruth’s cure was hijacked by her colleague, Erik Grundleger, who hungers for immortality, and the SuperJuve – a premium upgrade – was created, driving human lifespan to a new high. The wealthy elite who take it are dubbed Supers, and the population begins to skyrocket.

Then, a perilous side-effect of the SuperJuve emerges, with catastrophic consequences, and as the planet is threatened, the population rebels, and laws are passed to restore order: life ends at 120. Supers are tracked down by Omnicide investigators like Mara, and executed…

Mara has her own reasons for hunting Supers, and she forms an unlikely alliance with Ruth to find Grundleger.

But Grundleger has been working on something even more radical and is one step ahead, with a deadly surprise in store for them both…

Review:

I’m not a massive science fiction reader, but I absolutely love Eve Smith’s work and The Cure might be my favourite novel of hers so far. It’s set in a world that I can easily imagine, that is developed from the scary situations that are currently unfolding across the world, making it incredibly compelling and giving it maximum impact.

The premise of The Cure is based on a world in which people are receiving injections that prevent them from ageing. Eve Smith’s research is so detailed and she has considered all the implications of an ageing population really carefully, giving me so much to think about as I was reading.

But The Cure is much more than a commentary on the decline of civilisation as we know it. It’s the story of two women, Mara and Ruth, who are heavily invested in the progress of the vaccine, but they both have very different roles. The chapters are told alternately from their perspectives, and this really helps to understand their thoughts and feelings and get to know them in more depth. I felt sympathy for both of them at different points, and I really hoped they could find a solution that worked, both personally and for society.

I could not tell how The Cure would end, but it’s full of tension and there are parts of it that really shocked me. I will be thinking about this story for a long time to come.

The Cure is available from Amazon.

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