Just been reading an astonishing new sci-fi/fantasy book called The Roar by Emma Clayton. It publishes this summer. I dislike much fantasy and nearly all sci-fi, so I don't know what made me start it. I made myself just open it and start reading, because I knew that if I read the back cover first I would be immediately put off and not give it a go.

Anyway, after a few pages I was intrigued, and after a few more I was hooked.

It's set in a dystopian future where an animal plague has forced human beings to retreat to a tiny area of the world. They hide behind a high wall, and the majority live in squalid, minute 'fold down' apartments which are so small that you have to fold away the kitchen in order to use the bedroom, and fold away the bed so you can then have dinner... Mika and his family live in one such place, and Mika's twin sister Ellie has mysteriously disappeared. Everyone but Mika believes that she's dead...

I think this is this author's first book, and it's a really superb piece of writing. It's so self-assured and doesn't feel first-novelish at all.