Ross Patrick Writes
About Me
My name is Ross Patrick. I write literary and speculative novels - my debut novel is A New Dark Age: A Reckoning.
I also write about life, death, mental ...
A Reckoning is the first novel from a prospective series of stand alone speculative novels set in the latter half of the twenty-first century, depicting a ...
As well as my novels I regularly write blogs and articles on a range of subjects that all offer a fresh, alternative and personal perspective on life, ...
Reviews For My Latest Title
So at the start I thought what I have I started reading I was getting very confused it had medieval plus internet but I went with the flow and got involved. I went with the journey and as Esme developed so did my understanding of the book and where the author was going. The blurb is right it is very handmaids tale and I think that is what appealed to me.
I was given an advance copy by the publishers and netgalley but the review is entirely my own.
So at the start I thought what I have I started reading I was getting very confused it had medieval plus internet but I went with the flow and got involved. I went with the journey and as Esme developed so did my understanding of the book and where the author was going. The blurb is right it is very handmaids tale and I think that is what appealed to me.
I was given an advance copy by the publishers and netgalley but the review is entirely my own.
A dystopian novel set in the Fens and London just forty years in the future. A world none of us would recognize. A world already forced to the very edge of apocalypse: the collapse of the financial world, devastating climate change, and the onset of anarchy. A disturbing vision: fantasy that could so easily become fact. Speculative fiction at its very best.
A dystopian novel set in the Fens and London just forty years in the future. A world none of us would recognize. A world already forced to the very edge of apocalypse: the collapse of the financial world, devastating climate change, and the onset of anarchy. A disturbing vision: fantasy that could so easily become fact. Speculative fiction at its very best.
Set in the year 2061, this novel is a bleak and dramatic tale of a dystopian future, which explores the best and worst of humanity.
It is also a story of the journey and enlightenment of seventeen year old Esme Sedgebrook, a downtrodden young woman from the provinces, who joins the rebels in their bid to shake the foundations of a society that has become sick, twisted and corrupt. Women have been reduced to chattels and the exploitation of the populace by those in power is cruel and stark. The read is a dark one but there are shafts of light in the bonds of friendship and the bravery and commradeship of many of the characters, often at great personal cost.
The world building was excellent – I could easily visualise the people and places Esme and others encounter as the plot progresses. This future England is still recognisable, but it is scarred, broken and decayed and technology and medicine have all but disappeared. Society is divided between the obscenely rich, isolated from the common people who eek out a living and many have reverted back to the old ways of building local community ties and religion has once again taken hold. And then there are the lawmakers and the military, who do the dirty work for those in power and finally the revolutionaries, who baulk at the many wrongs in society and devote their lives to bring the system down.
I found it to be a deeply thoughtful read which draws on our collective memories of the Peasants’ Revolt, enclosures, the Industrial Revolution and the development of capitalism. It contains rich characterisations and descriptions and a complex plot with dark undercurrents of violence and desperation throughout, interspersed with friendship, hope and the determination to bring about change.
I know that this read will stay with me for a long time, not least because of Esme's personal journey but also as it cautions us about what could very well come to pass if circumstances allow.
Set in the year 2061, this novel is a bleak and dramatic tale of a dystopian future, which explores the best and worst of humanity.
It is also a story of the journey and enlightenment of seventeen year old Esme Sedgebrook, a downtrodden young woman from the provinces, who joins the rebels in their bid to shake the foundations of a society that has become sick, twisted and corrupt. Women have been reduced to chattels and the exploitation of the populace by those in power is cruel and stark. The read is a dark one but there are shafts of light in the bonds of friendship and the bravery and commradeship of many of the characters, often at great personal cost.
The world building was excellent – I could easily visualise the people and places Esme and others encounter as the plot progresses. This future England is still recognisable, but it is scarred, broken and decayed and technology and medicine have all but disappeared. Society is divided between the obscenely rich, isolated from the common people who eek out a living and many have reverted back to the old ways of building local community ties and religion has once again taken hold. And then there are the lawmakers and the military, who do the dirty work for those in power and finally the revolutionaries, who baulk at the many wrongs in society and devote their lives to bring the system down.
I found it to be a deeply thoughtful read which draws on our collective memories of the Peasants’ Revolt, enclosures, the Industrial Revolution and the development of capitalism. It contains rich characterisations and descriptions and a complex plot with dark undercurrents of violence and desperation throughout, interspersed with friendship, hope and the determination to bring about change.
I know that this read will stay with me for a long time, not least because of Esme's personal journey but also as it cautions us about what could very well come to pass if circumstances allow.
This novel is a dystopian one with eerie echoes back form the time it is set in, 2061, and now. The experiences of the past 2 years have not only widened the gap between the haves and have nots-the decimation of the supermarket stocks, wielding of privilege, one rule for them and one for us has highlighted, like never before, the disdain which those in power have for those who are not, and yet who actually put them there.
The situation that main character, and through whose eyes we see this near future version of the UK, Esme is living in, is paradoxically very medieval whilst the surroundings are recognisable as run down versions of the cities we know.
People who don't live in London, the aspirational homestead and secure heartland of the UK, live in outposts, or villages, where they live by their means, returning to a more natural, down to earth manner of life. It includes a return to using natural remedies for medicine, and a sense of boundaries and borders where they are kept in line by the thought of 'Roamers', bands of nomads who are not allowed inside these towns or villages, and attack the lonely travellers they come across on the road.
An allegory for succumbing to the 21st century malaise, 'Falling Sickness', the catastrophic disease which brought about the down fall of 'society' as we know it, symbolises the bridge between the now and then of 2021 Britain, and 2061.
Yet there is hope. A preacher, cleverly named Joan Bell, and a Welsh couple, are travelling the countryside as groups of dissenters, gathering and mobilising those, who to paraphrase the seminal movie Network, are 'mad as hell and not going to take it any more.'
That it is a Welsh couple is absolutely natural and fit, to my mind -Welsh born and bred-as our nation currently has the highest levels of children living in poverty out of the 4 UK nations, the highest number of adults on anti-depressants as well as the largest housing estate in Europe. Social deprivation and lack of life choices abound in it,I should know, we live there.
Esme , living with her father, his second wife and her young child, has little to look forward to as she basically approaches the zenith of what could be considered her 'marriagability'.
Her mother, having run off to London, has left her without a role model during her formative teens and the one she does have, Lizzie -tellingly named for the old queen, Elizabeth II-is not much older than herself. Her father is seen as a pillar of their community, not only for carrying on in the wake of his wife's abandonment, but also in 'taking in' the troubled Lizzie who id not well regarded in their small community. The double standards of not only a society which has abandoned the poor, the vulnerable and the sick, but also it's obligations to sexual equality, stand out a mile as Esme's father begins courting, and making Esme visit with the son of the mayor.#
With little to look forward to beyond marriage and child rearing-Esme has absolutely no say in this whatsoever-the imminent visit of the dissenters and a secret meeting which they hold near her village, is not only the first time Esme has tasted hope, it is the first time that she has seen people speak forth the things which have until now, remained firmly held behind her lips.
For the first time, she is not alone.
The reckoning is coming, those who have been previously not held to account, and used their might, money and social standing to manipulate the narrative are looking increasingly shaky at the top of their pyramid. Their position there is only granted by the weight and mass at the base of such a structure and now, well now things are going to change. Revolution is in the air and it has the unmistakable tang of copper....
I thoroughly loved this book, it holds up a mirror to not only the multiple ongoing , frankly outrageous calumny which is our current parliament, the grotesque gaps between those who control the majority of our country's wealth -2% of the UK population hold approximately 97% of the wealth and guess where they live????- and those living in abject poverty keep widening more and more.
Civil liberties are being stripped, people are dying for lack of adequate health care, children are missing on vital safe guarding, protection, and the sheer basics of life which should be standard to all. Food, shelter and warmth are all up for grabs in this brave new world.
Riding a crest of modernity, this is an outstanding and disturbing novel-anything which challenges you to think, feel and react is, to me, always going to be outstanding-which highlights the debut of a strong new voice in dystopian fiction.
This novel is a dystopian one with eerie echoes back form the time it is set in, 2061, and now. The experiences of the past 2 years have not only widened the gap between the haves and have nots-the decimation of the supermarket stocks, wielding of privilege, one rule for them and one for us has highlighted, like never before, the disdain which those in power have for those who are not, and yet who actually put them there.
The situation that main character, and through whose eyes we see this near future version of the UK, Esme is living in, is paradoxically very medieval whilst the surroundings are recognisable as run down versions of the cities we know.
People who don't live in London, the aspirational homestead and secure heartland of the UK, live in outposts, or villages, where they live by their means, returning to a more natural, down to earth manner of life. It includes a return to using natural remedies for medicine, and a sense of boundaries and borders where they are kept in line by the thought of 'Roamers', bands of nomads who are not allowed inside these towns or villages, and attack the lonely travellers they come across on the road.
An allegory for succumbing to the 21st century malaise, 'Falling Sickness', the catastrophic disease which brought about the down fall of 'society' as we know it, symbolises the bridge between the now and then of 2021 Britain, and 2061.
Yet there is hope. A preacher, cleverly named Joan Bell, and a Welsh couple, are travelling the countryside as groups of dissenters, gathering and mobilising those, who to paraphrase the seminal movie Network, are 'mad as hell and not going to take it any more.'
That it is a Welsh couple is absolutely natural and fit, to my mind -Welsh born and bred-as our nation currently has the highest levels of children living in poverty out of the 4 UK nations, the highest number of adults on anti-depressants as well as the largest housing estate in Europe. Social deprivation and lack of life choices abound in it,I should know, we live there.
Esme , living with her father, his second wife and her young child, has little to look forward to as she basically approaches the zenith of what could be considered her 'marriagability'.
Her mother, having run off to London, has left her without a role model during her formative teens and the one she does have, Lizzie -tellingly named for the old queen, Elizabeth II-is not much older than herself. Her father is seen as a pillar of their community, not only for carrying on in the wake of his wife's abandonment, but also in 'taking in' the troubled Lizzie who id not well regarded in their small community. The double standards of not only a society which has abandoned the poor, the vulnerable and the sick, but also it's obligations to sexual equality, stand out a mile as Esme's father begins courting, and making Esme visit with the son of the mayor.#
With little to look forward to beyond marriage and child rearing-Esme has absolutely no say in this whatsoever-the imminent visit of the dissenters and a secret meeting which they hold near her village, is not only the first time Esme has tasted hope, it is the first time that she has seen people speak forth the things which have until now, remained firmly held behind her lips.
For the first time, she is not alone.
The reckoning is coming, those who have been previously not held to account, and used their might, money and social standing to manipulate the narrative are looking increasingly shaky at the top of their pyramid. Their position there is only granted by the weight and mass at the base of such a structure and now, well now things are going to change. Revolution is in the air and it has the unmistakable tang of copper....
I thoroughly loved this book, it holds up a mirror to not only the multiple ongoing , frankly outrageous calumny which is our current parliament, the grotesque gaps between those who control the majority of our country's wealth -2% of the UK population hold approximately 97% of the wealth and guess where they live????- and those living in abject poverty keep widening more and more.
Civil liberties are being stripped, people are dying for lack of adequate health care, children are missing on vital safe guarding, protection, and the sheer basics of life which should be standard to all. Food, shelter and warmth are all up for grabs in this brave new world.
Riding a crest of modernity, this is an outstanding and disturbing novel-anything which challenges you to think, feel and react is, to me, always going to be outstanding-which highlights the debut of a strong new voice in dystopian fiction.
So at the start I thought what I have I started reading I was getting very confused it had medieval plus internet but I went with the flow and got involved. I went with the journey and as Esme developed so did my understanding of the book and where the author was going. The blurb is right it is very handmaids tale and I think that is what appealed to me.
I was given an advance copy by the publishers and netgalley but the review is entirely my own.
So at the start I thought what I have I started reading I was getting very confused it had medieval plus internet but I went with the flow and got involved. I went with the journey and as Esme developed so did my understanding of the book and where the author was going. The blurb is right it is very handmaids tale and I think that is what appealed to me.
I was given an advance copy by the publishers and netgalley but the review is entirely my own.
A dystopian novel set in the Fens and London just forty years in the future. A world none of us would recognize. A world already forced to the very edge of apocalypse: the collapse of the financial world, devastating climate change, and the onset of anarchy. A disturbing vision: fantasy that could so easily become fact. Speculative fiction at its very best.
A dystopian novel set in the Fens and London just forty years in the future. A world none of us would recognize. A world already forced to the very edge of apocalypse: the collapse of the financial world, devastating climate change, and the onset of anarchy. A disturbing vision: fantasy that could so easily become fact. Speculative fiction at its very best.
Set in the year 2061, this novel is a bleak and dramatic tale of a dystopian future, which explores the best and worst of humanity.
It is also a story of the journey and enlightenment of seventeen year old Esme Sedgebrook, a downtrodden young woman from the provinces, who joins the rebels in their bid to shake the foundations of a society that has become sick, twisted and corrupt. Women have been reduced to chattels and the exploitation of the populace by those in power is cruel and stark. The read is a dark one but there are shafts of light in the bonds of friendship and the bravery and commradeship of many of the characters, often at great personal cost.
The world building was excellent – I could easily visualise the people and places Esme and others encounter as the plot progresses. This future England is still recognisable, but it is scarred, broken and decayed and technology and medicine have all but disappeared. Society is divided between the obscenely rich, isolated from the common people who eek out a living and many have reverted back to the old ways of building local community ties and religion has once again taken hold. And then there are the lawmakers and the military, who do the dirty work for those in power and finally the revolutionaries, who baulk at the many wrongs in society and devote their lives to bring the system down.
I found it to be a deeply thoughtful read which draws on our collective memories of the Peasants’ Revolt, enclosures, the Industrial Revolution and the development of capitalism. It contains rich characterisations and descriptions and a complex plot with dark undercurrents of violence and desperation throughout, interspersed with friendship, hope and the determination to bring about change.
I know that this read will stay with me for a long time, not least because of Esme's personal journey but also as it cautions us about what could very well come to pass if circumstances allow.
Set in the year 2061, this novel is a bleak and dramatic tale of a dystopian future, which explores the best and worst of humanity.
It is also a story of the journey and enlightenment of seventeen year old Esme Sedgebrook, a downtrodden young woman from the provinces, who joins the rebels in their bid to shake the foundations of a society that has become sick, twisted and corrupt. Women have been reduced to chattels and the exploitation of the populace by those in power is cruel and stark. The read is a dark one but there are shafts of light in the bonds of friendship and the bravery and commradeship of many of the characters, often at great personal cost.
The world building was excellent – I could easily visualise the people and places Esme and others encounter as the plot progresses. This future England is still recognisable, but it is scarred, broken and decayed and technology and medicine have all but disappeared. Society is divided between the obscenely rich, isolated from the common people who eek out a living and many have reverted back to the old ways of building local community ties and religion has once again taken hold. And then there are the lawmakers and the military, who do the dirty work for those in power and finally the revolutionaries, who baulk at the many wrongs in society and devote their lives to bring the system down.
I found it to be a deeply thoughtful read which draws on our collective memories of the Peasants’ Revolt, enclosures, the Industrial Revolution and the development of capitalism. It contains rich characterisations and descriptions and a complex plot with dark undercurrents of violence and desperation throughout, interspersed with friendship, hope and the determination to bring about change.
I know that this read will stay with me for a long time, not least because of Esme's personal journey but also as it cautions us about what could very well come to pass if circumstances allow.
This novel is a dystopian one with eerie echoes back form the time it is set in, 2061, and now. The experiences of the past 2 years have not only widened the gap between the haves and have nots-the decimation of the supermarket stocks, wielding of privilege, one rule for them and one for us has highlighted, like never before, the disdain which those in power have for those who are not, and yet who actually put them there.
The situation that main character, and through whose eyes we see this near future version of the UK, Esme is living in, is paradoxically very medieval whilst the surroundings are recognisable as run down versions of the cities we know.
People who don't live in London, the aspirational homestead and secure heartland of the UK, live in outposts, or villages, where they live by their means, returning to a more natural, down to earth manner of life. It includes a return to using natural remedies for medicine, and a sense of boundaries and borders where they are kept in line by the thought of 'Roamers', bands of nomads who are not allowed inside these towns or villages, and attack the lonely travellers they come across on the road.
An allegory for succumbing to the 21st century malaise, 'Falling Sickness', the catastrophic disease which brought about the down fall of 'society' as we know it, symbolises the bridge between the now and then of 2021 Britain, and 2061.
Yet there is hope. A preacher, cleverly named Joan Bell, and a Welsh couple, are travelling the countryside as groups of dissenters, gathering and mobilising those, who to paraphrase the seminal movie Network, are 'mad as hell and not going to take it any more.'
That it is a Welsh couple is absolutely natural and fit, to my mind -Welsh born and bred-as our nation currently has the highest levels of children living in poverty out of the 4 UK nations, the highest number of adults on anti-depressants as well as the largest housing estate in Europe. Social deprivation and lack of life choices abound in it,I should know, we live there.
Esme , living with her father, his second wife and her young child, has little to look forward to as she basically approaches the zenith of what could be considered her 'marriagability'.
Her mother, having run off to London, has left her without a role model during her formative teens and the one she does have, Lizzie -tellingly named for the old queen, Elizabeth II-is not much older than herself. Her father is seen as a pillar of their community, not only for carrying on in the wake of his wife's abandonment, but also in 'taking in' the troubled Lizzie who id not well regarded in their small community. The double standards of not only a society which has abandoned the poor, the vulnerable and the sick, but also it's obligations to sexual equality, stand out a mile as Esme's father begins courting, and making Esme visit with the son of the mayor.#
With little to look forward to beyond marriage and child rearing-Esme has absolutely no say in this whatsoever-the imminent visit of the dissenters and a secret meeting which they hold near her village, is not only the first time Esme has tasted hope, it is the first time that she has seen people speak forth the things which have until now, remained firmly held behind her lips.
For the first time, she is not alone.
The reckoning is coming, those who have been previously not held to account, and used their might, money and social standing to manipulate the narrative are looking increasingly shaky at the top of their pyramid. Their position there is only granted by the weight and mass at the base of such a structure and now, well now things are going to change. Revolution is in the air and it has the unmistakable tang of copper....
I thoroughly loved this book, it holds up a mirror to not only the multiple ongoing , frankly outrageous calumny which is our current parliament, the grotesque gaps between those who control the majority of our country's wealth -2% of the UK population hold approximately 97% of the wealth and guess where they live????- and those living in abject poverty keep widening more and more.
Civil liberties are being stripped, people are dying for lack of adequate health care, children are missing on vital safe guarding, protection, and the sheer basics of life which should be standard to all. Food, shelter and warmth are all up for grabs in this brave new world.
Riding a crest of modernity, this is an outstanding and disturbing novel-anything which challenges you to think, feel and react is, to me, always going to be outstanding-which highlights the debut of a strong new voice in dystopian fiction.
This novel is a dystopian one with eerie echoes back form the time it is set in, 2061, and now. The experiences of the past 2 years have not only widened the gap between the haves and have nots-the decimation of the supermarket stocks, wielding of privilege, one rule for them and one for us has highlighted, like never before, the disdain which those in power have for those who are not, and yet who actually put them there.
The situation that main character, and through whose eyes we see this near future version of the UK, Esme is living in, is paradoxically very medieval whilst the surroundings are recognisable as run down versions of the cities we know.
People who don't live in London, the aspirational homestead and secure heartland of the UK, live in outposts, or villages, where they live by their means, returning to a more natural, down to earth manner of life. It includes a return to using natural remedies for medicine, and a sense of boundaries and borders where they are kept in line by the thought of 'Roamers', bands of nomads who are not allowed inside these towns or villages, and attack the lonely travellers they come across on the road.
An allegory for succumbing to the 21st century malaise, 'Falling Sickness', the catastrophic disease which brought about the down fall of 'society' as we know it, symbolises the bridge between the now and then of 2021 Britain, and 2061.
Yet there is hope. A preacher, cleverly named Joan Bell, and a Welsh couple, are travelling the countryside as groups of dissenters, gathering and mobilising those, who to paraphrase the seminal movie Network, are 'mad as hell and not going to take it any more.'
That it is a Welsh couple is absolutely natural and fit, to my mind -Welsh born and bred-as our nation currently has the highest levels of children living in poverty out of the 4 UK nations, the highest number of adults on anti-depressants as well as the largest housing estate in Europe. Social deprivation and lack of life choices abound in it,I should know, we live there.
Esme , living with her father, his second wife and her young child, has little to look forward to as she basically approaches the zenith of what could be considered her 'marriagability'.
Her mother, having run off to London, has left her without a role model during her formative teens and the one she does have, Lizzie -tellingly named for the old queen, Elizabeth II-is not much older than herself. Her father is seen as a pillar of their community, not only for carrying on in the wake of his wife's abandonment, but also in 'taking in' the troubled Lizzie who id not well regarded in their small community. The double standards of not only a society which has abandoned the poor, the vulnerable and the sick, but also it's obligations to sexual equality, stand out a mile as Esme's father begins courting, and making Esme visit with the son of the mayor.#
With little to look forward to beyond marriage and child rearing-Esme has absolutely no say in this whatsoever-the imminent visit of the dissenters and a secret meeting which they hold near her village, is not only the first time Esme has tasted hope, it is the first time that she has seen people speak forth the things which have until now, remained firmly held behind her lips.
For the first time, she is not alone.
The reckoning is coming, those who have been previously not held to account, and used their might, money and social standing to manipulate the narrative are looking increasingly shaky at the top of their pyramid. Their position there is only granted by the weight and mass at the base of such a structure and now, well now things are going to change. Revolution is in the air and it has the unmistakable tang of copper....
I thoroughly loved this book, it holds up a mirror to not only the multiple ongoing , frankly outrageous calumny which is our current parliament, the grotesque gaps between those who control the majority of our country's wealth -2% of the UK population hold approximately 97% of the wealth and guess where they live????- and those living in abject poverty keep widening more and more.
Civil liberties are being stripped, people are dying for lack of adequate health care, children are missing on vital safe guarding, protection, and the sheer basics of life which should be standard to all. Food, shelter and warmth are all up for grabs in this brave new world.
Riding a crest of modernity, this is an outstanding and disturbing novel-anything which challenges you to think, feel and react is, to me, always going to be outstanding-which highlights the debut of a strong new voice in dystopian fiction.
So at the start I thought what I have I started reading I was getting very confused it had medieval plus internet but I went with the flow and got involved. I went with the journey and as Esme developed so did my understanding of the book and where the author was going. The blurb is right it is very handmaids tale and I think that is what appealed to me.
I was given an advance copy by the publishers and netgalley but the review is entirely my own.
So at the start I thought what I have I started reading I was getting very confused it had medieval plus internet but I went with the flow and got involved. I went with the journey and as Esme developed so did my understanding of the book and where the author was going. The blurb is right it is very handmaids tale and I think that is what appealed to me.
I was given an advance copy by the publishers and netgalley but the review is entirely my own.
A dystopian novel set in the Fens and London just forty years in the future. A world none of us would recognize. A world already forced to the very edge of apocalypse: the collapse of the financial world, devastating climate change, and the onset of anarchy. A disturbing vision: fantasy that could so easily become fact. Speculative fiction at its very best.
A dystopian novel set in the Fens and London just forty years in the future. A world none of us would recognize. A world already forced to the very edge of apocalypse: the collapse of the financial world, devastating climate change, and the onset of anarchy. A disturbing vision: fantasy that could so easily become fact. Speculative fiction at its very best.