Madeline Ashby

They call it Company Town - a Family-owned city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes. Meet Hwa. One of the few in her community to forego bio-engineered enhancements, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig. But she's an expert in the arts of self-defence, and she's been charged with training the Family's youngest, who has been receiving death threats - seemingly from another timeline. Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city's stability - serial killer? Or something much, much worse..? File Under: Science Fiction From the Trade Paperback edition.

Company Town

MacKenzie Hamon

I was very excited for this book after Canada Reads, but ultimately found that while I appreciated the author's effort in creating this world, the plot and pacing fell flat. It also did not make for a good audiobook. It was extremely hard to keep the characters straight, particularly when you can't flip back the pages to refresh your memory, making the reveal of the villain at the end of the story anti-climatic. The narrator's accents - including the British accent - changed throughout the story, which also didn't help keep characters separate and distinct, particularly in the beginning when you're still learning who everyone is.

Didi Chanoch

Due to a neurological disorder and her mother's skewed priorities, Go Jung-hwa is one of the few people working in her oil rig city not to be augmented biologically or cybernetically. This doesn't stop her from being a bad-ass. She's trained in Taekwondo, and works as a bodyguard for the local sex workers union. She is hired away from them to be the body guard and trainer for Joel Lynch, the youngest son and proclaimed heir to the Lynch family, the new owners of the oil rig. 

The worldbuilding and characters in the novel are brilliant. The plot is dense, but at times maybe not as tight as one would want. Or it could be that I didn't grasp some of it. That's the one star knocked off. Because a couple of the question marks I was left with may not have been intentional. Still, it's a very strong near future SF novel, and one I definitely recommend.

Maggie Gordon

I was very fortunate to review a copy of  Company Town  from NetGalley. I was attracted to it initially by its gorgeous cover! It has a very striking design that drew me in, and the blurb said that the story was set in Canada and had a woman of colour as the protagonist so I was SOLD. After reading the book, I am glad to report that my fairly superficial reasons for choosing it turned out well! Company Town was a really fun read with great characters, an intriguing setting, and a fast-paced plot. 

In Company Town, readers follow Hwa, a disabled Korean woman who lives on a massive set of oil rigs off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes. When we meet Hwa, she is a body guard for the Sex Worker’s Union. She lives in a world where almost everyone has altered themselves with certain technological tools to give them greater abilities and skills, but Hwa has forgone them all, giving her certain advantages. When the oil rig city is taken over by a new company, they hire Hwa as a bodyguard for the youngest son of the owner. The rest of the story deals with Hwa trying to make sure that no one kills the heir under her watch, as well as tracking a serial murderer that targets her old Sex Worker Union friends. 

I suspect that some people are going to claim that Company Town is “message fiction”. I have an issue with this term. In the past few years, there’s been quite a division in the speculative fiction community about whether there’s too much social justice “infiltrating” the medium. However, most of the books that get attacked for being more about their message than their story don’t actually have that problem. For example, Ancillary Justice and its sequels has been trashed for being feminist propaganda, but I found them to be an utterly fantastic and enthralling narrative! I could barely put the books down when I read them, and the interesting world building, including how Leckie treated gender, just offered me new and unique things to think about, which is exactly what I want from science fiction! Protesting against “messages” is often just saying that you’re not interested in new types of stories from different perspectives. I like the golden age books a lot, with lots of blasters and explosions, but a careful consideration of a social issue through a creative sci-fi lens is just as satisfying to me. If that’s not your favourite style of book, you’ve still got lots to read, but the surge of books that deal with people and issues long excluded from speculative fiction means we have more options! Options are awesome! Everyone wins! YEAH!

Company Town may draw the ire of the anti-message fiction people. It deals with people and ideas that don’t often get a lot of attention in sci-fi, and Ashby addresses with them in a nuanced and realistic manner. There’s a Sex Worker’s Union and the plot details the challenges sex workers face (including high rates of violence). One character suffers quite badly because of the anti-vaccination movement. As mentioned above, Hwa is both racialised and disabled, though she never feels as if she’s diverse for diversity’s sake (and if anyone thinks she’s too kick-ass for a disabled person, I’d suggest that they meet more disabled people). I was also impressed that Ashby dared mention that some people menstruate! As an aside in her head, Hwa thinks about her menstrual cup. I know there are people out there who think that’s a useless or gross thing to think about, but as a person who uses these products, it’s not! It’s weirder to see so much of fiction just ignore that this is a thing lots of people deal with on a monthly basis. That one tiny line did a lot to humanise and make Hwa real for me, and it really helped draw me into the story. Menstruation’s only message is that it’s a biological function that happens to lots of people, so complaints that this is another social justice warrior book are just overwrought. Hwa and her world contain a lot of things not often discussed in science fiction, and the genre is made better for including them. 

There are some weak spots with the book. In particular, I think the ending was rushed and could have been better fleshed out. Additionally, Company Town is one of the few books in recent years that I think could have easily been longer. I would have enjoyed spending more time with the characters, particularly in regards to the romance and the villain. However, despite the rushing, I think the book wrapped up satisfactorily, and what didn’t get touched on this time round will hopefully be dealt with in a sequel. 

Overall, Company Town feels a bit like Rachel Bach’s Paradox (Fortune’s Pawn) series with the atmosphere of a 1980s sci-fi film (and I think this combination is awesome!). The oil rigs are a good mix of gritty when Hwa travels through her home zones where the rest of the poor live, but also reflect that delightful, shiny scientific newness when she’s interacting with her very rich employers. The sense of space is fantastic, and the oil rigs feel like a place that actually exists, rather than just a cool imagined thing in someone’s head. And, like Devi from Paradox, Hwa is a fantastically real female character that defies the tropes that normally plague women in sci-fi. She’s exceptionally tough, but the book shows you what it takes for her to have achieved her strength (no carbs, so much strength training!). She has a disability that affects her life, but she’s not portrayed (to readers) as someone to pity. She’s an outsider for many reasons, but never in that frustrating “no one understands me!” manner that too many authors use. I really enjoyed this book and hope to see more from Ashby in the future!



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I really enjoyed Company Town! It's a fun read, and Madeline Ashby is an upcoming author to watch.

Full review to come closer to the date of release.

Thanks for NetGalley and Macmillan/Tor-Forge for the ARC!

Bryan Alexander

A rich and interesting, engaging novel.
I've been blogging notes here:
https://bryanalexander.org/2016/10/15...
https://bryanalexander.org/2016/11/03...

Rohan Uddin

Shona Tiger

Stephanie Highfield 

2017 Winner of the Sunburst Award Society's Copper Cylinder Adult Award 2017 Canada Reads Finalist 2017 Locus Award Finalist for Science Fiction Novel Category 2017 Sunburst Award Finalist for Adult Fiction 2017 Aurora Awards Finalist for Best Novell Madeline Ashby's Company Town is a brilliant, twisted mystery, as one woman must evaluate saving the people of a town that can't be saved, or saving herself. "Elegant, cruel, and brutally perfect, Company Town is a prize of a novel." —Mira Grant, New York Times Bestselling and Hugo-Award nominated author of the Newsflesh series New Arcadia is a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bio-engineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig—making her doubly an outsider, as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire. Still, her expertise in the arts of self-defense and her record as a fighter mean that her services are yet in high demand. When the youngest Lynch needs training and protection, the family turns to Hwa. But can even she protect against increasingly intense death threats seemingly coming from another timeline? Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city's stability and heightens the unease of a rig turning over. All signs point to a nearly invisible serial killer, but all of the murders seem to lead right back to Hwa's front door. Company Town has never been the safest place to be—but now, the danger is personal. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Company Town

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