Have you read Karen Healey's latest (When We Wake)? One of the things I really enjoyed about it is that the future Australia is filled with awesome stuff on some fronts (aside from just generally cool technological advances, religious and gender intolerance has mostly been overcome, there's a strong focus on the environment, and safe, regulated recreational drugs are legal), and horrible stuff on others (nationalism is a huge problem, the north-south economic divide is much worse, the environmental push came too late, and other nations are much further behind on the social side of things). It's the sort of mix I really enjoy, and while there are definitely villains on at least two fronts, both of them are genuinely working for what they think is a better world (no matter how fucked up that belief might be), and neither is an overlord figure.
That said, I still liked The Shattering a little bit better.
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Have you read Karen Healey's latest (When We Wake)? One of the things I really enjoyed about it is that the future Australia is filled with awesome stuff on some fronts (aside from just generally cool technological advances, religious and gender intolerance has mostly been overcome, there's a strong focus on the environment, and safe, regulated recreational drugs are legal), and horrible stuff on others (nationalism is a huge problem, the north-south economic divide is much worse, the environmental push came too late, and other nations are much further behind on the social side of things). It's the sort of mix I really enjoy, and while there are definitely villains on at least two fronts, both of them are genuinely working for what they think is a better world (no matter how fucked up that belief might be), and neither is an overlord figure.
That said, I still liked The Shattering a little bit better.