This was an interesting and somewhat confusing book about first contact that I ultimately enjoyed, but it took me a while to get into it. The narrative is split between a past and present timeline with interludes interspersed, and the switching back and forth took some getting used to. I found it hard to keep the different timelines distinct, but once I had them cemented in my brain, I definitely enjoyed things a lot more. The last third of this book was really compelling for me and I am definitely intrigued to see where things go from here so I will be picking up the sequel and I hope that the series lives up to the potential of this first installment.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

It was unusual and very clever, although there were parts that I didn't like and I think some people would object to nowadays. However, it felt as though it was much, much longer than it apparently is. I did feel that it could have been tightened up.
The other thing that irritated me slightly is that it was forever jumping around in time - normally this is something I don't mind but in this book I found it quite distracting, for some reason. However, for unusual and thought provoking, this scored four stars.

Set in a future Nigeria, in the town of Rosewater, where psychics exist and a mysterious alien dome sends out healing vibes (and occasionally reanimates the dead) we follow Kaaro, whose one visit into the dome makes him determined never to return…
The story is complex and darkly beautiful, descriptively this is stunning, immersing you into Kaaro’s world entirely. He is a divisive, engaging protagonist who blends into the wildly original setting so well. Using different timelines and exploring many themes, Rosewater will have you turning the pages well into the night..
This is alien invasion as you’ve never seen it before, a sprawling, intriguing, epic of a novel, always unexpected and beautifully done. I’m a fan.
Highly recommend!

"So. ROSEWATER by @tadethompson needs to be a Netflix series. Nigerian setting, aliens, 'telepaths', zombies, fiercely weird biopunk, an intricate unfolding plot... The whole time I was reading it, I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd watch the *hell* out of it."

A science-fiction set in futuristic Nigeria? From an up and coming 'hottest' new talent, I knew I had to check this out. And my fingers were busy, requesting for a netgalley of the same. Got lucky and now here I am, sitting dazed and awed by the vision and the execution of a future, that is weirdly compelling, bizarre and absolutely stunning. Rosewater is one of those precious new books that manages to throw off all the yokes of 'prescribed writing guidelines' for science fiction. Indeed, Tade Thompson is a refreshing new talent and a world-class one at that.

Rosewater is a town on the edge - having developed around an Alien biodome that has mysteriously appeared in Nigeria. It is the year 2066 and the dome has been in place for a decade or more now, opening up once a year. It has been known to grant healing powers to the most incurable of diseases and so its a yearly pilgrimage that sees the population flocking over to Rosewater to get cured. Nobody knows how or why the alien dome has come into being. It just is.

We follow the story from the first person POV of Kaaro, a psychic who is a 'finder' - meaning he uncannily knows exactly where specific items are - money, gifts, missing men - you name it, Kaaro can 'find' it. In his younger days, Kaaro is a misguided youth with no sense of responsibility living as a sybarite, just bouncing from one party to the next. Till he is recruited by a special government agency known only as S45 or Special 45 division. Something akin to the Extra-Terrestrial section of the FBI that deals with the weird and inexplicable. While Kaaro keeps a day job at a bank - recruited to foil cyber-attacks on the bank databases along with some other 'sensitives' he in reality is utilised by S45 as an interrogator to slip into the minds of the insurgents and potential terrorists to foil such attacks or hunt up clues. He is a friendless chap, not easily likeable in the beginning as we shift between alternating decades in a non-linear narrative that can get confusing, real soon. But as a threat of a disease that only cripples and kills the sensitives becomes a reality in the present, we slowly start to stitch together the various threads leading unto this fragile, explosive situation that Kaaro has to uncover and dismantle before he himself falls prey to it. Could the aliens be behind this? Who is the mysterious Bicycle Girl who is spreading fascist anti-government messages among the public? Who is Molara, his ex-team-mate from his training days taking on the shape of a butterfly within the 'xenosphere' seducing him? And what of Kaaro's girlfriend, Aminat who is yet another puzzle in his life?

It's an edgy unconventional narrative - that takes no prisoners and bulls forward. Kaaro is not the most likeable of protagonist but he certainly keeps things on the boil. Unpredictable, frequently willing to bend the rules, listening only to his own whimsical desires ( And desires, he has a lot, wink wink!) The world-building is phenomenal. Both from utilising conventional elements of Africa, Nigeria to ground the whole narrative in that conventional couch but departing from the norm, in wildly imaginative ways to bring about the 'futuristic' elements. Take for example, the xenosphere itself. A psychic plane that manifests itself to the 'sensitives' where they can take any form. It gets a tad bit hallucinatory when it comes to the xenosphere adventures itself, like wild untamed fantasies. Or say Lijad, a whole city that has been re-populated thrice in history and has now disappeared off into a portal? The overarching sense of mystery abounds, of who or what is bumping off the sensitives driving the whole narrative forwards on full-steam. The interludes detail out Kaaro's youth and how he gets recruited into the S45, also filling in a lot of questions about the larger quest in itself.

It's a complicated story, I admit and I am still not sure if I got the entire narrative. But this is definitely one of the most exciting cutting-edge sci-fi stories that I've read in the recent past. The zany hallucinatory psychic planes and the alien machinations form pitch-perfect backdrop to the grey, character-driven moral compass that hints at hope and redemption. A definite must-read of 2018 and possibly a Hugo nominee next year?

I love this book, this is groundbreaking sci-fi unlike any other I've read, the ideas are off the scale and so imaginative.

A brilliant fantasy - sci-fi mash set in a future/post-apocalyptic Nigeria. With morally grey characters and a not so likeable main character, this was a brilliant first book to a trilogy and i cant wait to read the others.
With an intricate plot, powers and biodomes, it was a great read.

Such a great addition to the sci-fi, post apocalyptic genre. Loved Kaaro as an anti-hero. This books i like a mash up of so many different genres but a refreshing take through being set in Nigeria with having America disappeared decades ago.

I can't wait for the sequel because this was such a fascinating world that Thompson has written for us. The aliens, the bayou drum, the two psychics, it's just thoroughly unusual in the genre and which makes it fascinating. There's also such a good mystery. It's the kind of mystery where it's fully immersed into this world’s own logics. There are a lot of dark elements to the story but they are also a lot of more light-hearted details thrown in making a good balance.

It took me a little while to warm to Rosewater but when I did I was taken aback at the originality and imagination of the thing. The writing is excellent and the timeline, while initially confusing and requiring no small degree of ultimately rewarded concentration, allows Kaaro's story to reveal itself in a most satisfying manner. Kaaro is mostly dislikeable as every decent anti-hero should be, though I did find his sexual exploits fairly icky, and the female characters of Femi, Nike, Oyin-Da and Aminat were strong women with agency and kinda stole the show. The plot development is relentless and engaging and I particularly loved the complete lack of the annoying info-dumps that blight a lot of SF these days - the author treats his reader as an intelligent being which I always appreciate. The plot is scattered with little tid bits of what's to come which I usually find a little gratuitous in the hands of lesser writers but this guy knows how to hook without spoiling and it's addictive. And there are plenty of full on whoa WTF moments to boot. Intelligent, complex, satisfying SF. Would be a full 5 stars but for the, for me, unnecessary erections, ejaculations and copulations of the MC .

I struggled with this book so much. I’d read such glowing reviews from a whole range of people, but I just couldn’t get into it. Probably part of that is my own fault for reading it on the treadmill (though that normally isn’t a problem) and in little bits, but a lot of it was the narrator’s obsession with sex. I don’t know how many orgasms he had during the book, some of them spontaneous, let alone the number of erections he talks about (seriously), but everything for him seemed to revolve around sex. That’s what women mostly seemed to be for, for the narrator: the first question through his mind always seemed to be a variant on “can I fuck her?”

I especially did not enjoy him in gryphon form fucking a butterfly-winged stranger on what amounts to the astral plane. Just… no thank you.

There is some fascinating stuff here with the setting (Nigeria), the isolation of the US, the xenoforms, Wormwood… but for me it was buried under the general unpleasantness of Kaaro. He’s not particularly ashamed of using his talents to become a thief, and he’s definitely not ashamed of his objectification of women and his complete shallowness. There was an awesome potential whole different book here about Oyin Da, or Aminat, or Femi, but instead they’re sidelined and putting up with Kaaro’s shit.

I don’t know. I don’t get it, guys. I appreciate some aspects of it — SF set somewhere other than the US (or to a lesser extent, the UK/Europe)! The concept of a network of fungal infection allowing mindreading in sensitive people! Awesome! But.

I don’t think I’ll read the rest of the series.

Overall, I liked this. I like the voice, the writing style and the characters.

I was a bit confused at times with the jumping around in time but by the end I had it all straight (I think).

Well worth reading - it's different (in a good way) and I'm looking forward to the second book.

It's always a treat to read books that give a fresh and new take on genre fiction. Tade Thompson's Rosewater (review copy from Orbit books) is the first in his Wormwood trilogy, and unlike anything else out there at the moment.

The world changed when the Earth was invaded by first contact with an alien entity. But this isn't your traditional alien invasion. An alien fungus has landed and is colonising the planet after sending its tendrils and spores everywhere. The USA has gone dark, and Europe is cut off. Rosewater is a town in Nigeria that has grown up around a dome-like structure grown by the fungus. It provides free energy, and once a year the dome opens, healing the sick and bringing the recently dead back to life as zombies. Rosewater has become a destination for the desperate seeking healing and for those studying the dome. Over time it has grown into a thriving town full of graft and superstition.

Kaaro is one of those that has been changed by exposure to the fungus. His symbiotic relationship with it gives him psychic powers. It makes him a finder, able to use the connection between people and objects to find lost things. By day Kaaro works with others of his kind as a psychic firewall for one of the major banks, working in shifts to stop people like him breaking the safeguards and stealing from the bank. By night Kaaro is the unwilling employee of the security forces, interrogating suspects. But people like Kaaro are slowly dying, and no-one knows why.

Kaaro is not your typical white hat hero. He uses his powers to steal from the people around him. He objectifies women and exploits them for sex. He is rude and insubordinate to his bosses. He is largely indifferent to his colleagues and it takes him a long time to notice or care about the fate of the other people with powers like his.

This is a fresh story with a pleasing sense of mystery that steadfastly refuses to comply with traditional genre tropes, and does so proudly. At one stage one of the characters says to Kaaro, "I am tired of women and men of destiny. The idea of a singular hero and a manifest destiny just makes us all lazy. There is no destiny. There is choice, there is action, and any other narrative perpetuates a myth that someone else out there will fix our problems with a magic sword and a blessing from the gods."

We need more stories that get away from those over-used story-telling modes. I can't wait for the sequel.

Conceptually this is brilliant.
Near future Nigeria, a mysterious alien invasion, strange powers, a reluctant hero.
Sounds great right?

Unfortunately for me, the concept was so much better than the execution.

Firstly we have a lot of time jumping. Hopping between different parts of the MC's life each chapter. I tried my best to keep up and follow what was happening but this was not made easy. I almost felt like the book was fighting me in some parts. Reading on a Kindle also makes it a bit harder to quickly flick back and remind myself what the heck was going on at this point. Because of the time hopping, the MC would think or say something in the "present" that we as a reader don't understand and won't understand until a chapter or two later when we hop back and it is explained. This does grow a bit tiresome and makes the reader feel a bit in the dark.

Kaaro the main character is not a particularly likeable guy. He's severely lacking in morals, likes to make things as hard as possible for everyone else just for the fun of it, and it just a bit of a dick really. He tries to have sex with pretty much every female character in the book and happily has sex with some weird alien thing in the xenosphere while still seeing someone in the real world. He does wonder occasionally if that is cheating. Yes. It is.
Female characters are mostly described by the breast shape/size and the smell of their perfume and how turned on they make the MC.

I did almost put this down without finishing a couple of times but I don't regret pushing through to the finish.

So that's the negatives out of the way!

As I mentioned before, the concept is really interesting. Usually these kind of sci-fi stories are set in America so it is very nice to see one in Nigeria. The fairly small bits of information we are fed about the alien lifeforms are fascinating and I would have loved to have learned more, especially about those lifeforms which already exist on Earth.

I did find the book fairly easy to read in terms of prose and pacing. Apart from the frequent time jumps I found it easy to whizz through the book and enjoyed the writing in general.

A lot of people have given this book extremely high ratings and they love it. I think for me it was just a case of personal taste and not connecting with the characters.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review

In the deep past of the novel, aliens came to Earth. They're a fungal-styled lifeform, and have been altering the path of Earth ever since they set up a number of small "nature habitats", in which their way of life and biology is king. One of these habitats in Nigeria has been surrounded by the developing town of Rosewater.

People are drawn to Rosewater because once a year, the habitat opens, and an unknown energy leaves it, and can heal people of an incredible number of problems. Cancer, TB, HIV, ingrown toenail? All sorted. It can also "heal" the dead, but that apparently isn't the best idea, given the need for the clean-up crew to go around putting these people to rest.

In this town lives Kaaro, who is one of the "sensitives" more affected by the habitats than most. These sensitives can interact with the fungus aliens' xenosphere, which is a network of micro-tendrils established between everybody. This gives the sensitives access to people's thoughts and memories (and makes them a bit creepy). That's how Kaaro ends up working for Section 45, an intelligence agency set up to keep an eye on all of the weird changes that are happening around these habitats.

His mission? Firstly, crack open the brains of criminals, to get them to confess and improve the success of the criminal justice system. Secondly, work out out what's happening to the sensitives, who keep dying of a strange illness.

It's complex. Very much so. I've ended up reading this over months for various reasons, and my reading of it has definitely suffered because of that. There's about four different plotlines interwoven, spread over a range of timelines. We've got insight into Kaaro's childhood, how he first got involved with S45, and the more recent, with his developing relationship with Aminat. There's also the eternal hunting for Wormwood, and other secret places belonging to the alien and the human communities that have grown up integrating and welcoming it.

It needs more focus than I gave it, in a similar manner to last year's Gnomon, so I'd say don't try and read this along with something else.

Difficulties aside, there's a shedload of good in this. The fungal aliens remind me nicely of Greg Bear's Blood Music, and there's a lot of thought put into how the world would develop around the cataclysmic changes caused by an invasion. The xenosphere allows some impressively psychedelic scenes, with a fun mix of metaphor and reality. And it's a nice insight into a slice of Nigerian culture. Finally, there are so many other fascinating titbits of the rest of the globe, such as America just going entirely dark, and "something" happening to London. There are a lot of other flagella you could pull on to end up in a different story.

Kaaro is a bit unlikable, but there's so many characters here, each built to have their own appeals and flaws, he fits right in. Each of them feel believable, and have hints of their own stories going on in the background, that keep you guessing until most of the way along. The bureaucracy around S45 is also painfully true to life, and how he rebels in small ways is pleasing.

I'm definitely recommending it, with the caveat it is not an "easy" book. It takes a fair degree of attention, and reading it over any length of time is probably a recipe for disaster. But the way those layers unfold is cleverly done. You probably need to get over the first hump where complexities are still being added, and then when it all starts tying together it tends to make more sense.

Tade Thompson’s phenomenal novel “Rosewater” is beyond constraints of genre.

Some called Rosewater Afropunk, some called it cyber- or bio-punk, science-fiction, or even urban fantasy. But it feels beyond genre like Strugatsky’s “Roadside Picnic” or Lem’s “Solaris”. And it also bears that distinguishable characteristic which Tarkovsky found in both aforementioned novels and that made his own films unforgettable – tangible texture.

Everything about this book – the characters, the plot, Nigeria and blacked out US, has its own unique, yet interconnected nature.

Take the premise – the aliens’ landing annihilated UK, rendered US dark and isolated, and ended up in Nigeria where an entire town of Rosewater grew around an impenetrable alien dome that occasionally heals every imaginable disease on earth, including death. The aliens also spread fungal spores that connected the entire world with a “xenosphere”, with some people being more sensitive to it than others. Antifungal cream has never been this trendy.

In the midst of all the aforementioned craziness, the story follows the narrator Kaaro, an ironically apathetic, misogynistic and self-preserving ex-thieve, who is particularly “sensitive” to the xenosphere and works at the fittingly named “Integrity Bank” where he listens to the thoughts of the customers, fifteen floors below him. He also works for a covert operations government agency where he reads minds of criminals and terrorists. Every time he penetrates someone’s mind, Kaaro becomes them.

It leaves him wondering – how can you be yourself while being someone else at the same time? Where their fear ends and his begins? Kaaro’s arc is a nuanced exploration of the boundary between feeling anxious for someone and feeling someone’s anxiety. And it works because Kaaro himself feels real, physiologically and psychologically.

Traveling alongside Kaaro is not a comfortable ride. And it shouldn’t be. This discomfort is perfectly described in an interlude between numbered chapters where Kaaro’s work makes him believe it was him, not the suspect, who committed heinous crimes, and spend nine months in a hospital ward.

The supporting cast is diverse, engaging, and interesting. Ranging from Kaaro’s parents, to other sensitives, to his new enigmatic girlfriend, to Oyin Da – the “Bicycle Girl”, and alien manifestation in a human body – Anthony, you could never in a thousand years mistake one of them for someone else.

Xenosphere is a character in its own right. The visceral, biological nature of it, the way it works and even raises quasi-zombies (as opposed to some abstract or conceptual magic or scifi-ish technological advancement), simultaneously evokes the imagery of Cronenberg’s body-horror classics and flora-centrism of Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy.

The city of Rosewater is as inalienable from the story as xenosphere and Kaaro are. With the alien dome with a Utopia inside of it in the middle of the city, Rosewater puts a mirror to how capitalism handles religion, healthcare, and refugees. As the city became a Mecca for all the sick and desperate, authorities and locals were quick enough to turn it into a cash cow and milk it to death.

A lot of things are happening in this novel, and considering the constant time jumps between the younger and older Kaaro, Thompson juggles it all professionally and with an ease of a seasoned author. He uses the jumps between the different versions of the protagonist to show how his apathy and conflicts are but a distant, dull echo of the conflicts and trauma of his youth, not faint, yet not releasing its firm grip. Tade Thompson’s attention to detail, with clues and “maps” sprinkled all over the place, adds significant depth to the texture mentioned before.

And like all the best fiction Rosewater is not apolitical (if apolitical art is possible at all). Thompson not only alludes to certain politicians, occurrences, and real-world monsters, he does not shy away from outright commenting to the current political, social, and ecological condition of our world. And it, too, works perfectly. The precision of the commentary puts the cherry on top of Rosewater. There are books that are great, they sit at the top of end year book lists and maybe win an award or two, but are forgotten in a couple of years. “Rosewater” is widely recognised as one of the best books of 2018, and rightly so, but it feels like it is here to stay with us a bit longer than your usual book of the year.

Nabokov once stated that with a truly great book there is no reading, only rereading, since you can’t appreciate it fully after only one reading. In case of “Rosewater” it is entirely true.

I don’t read a massive amount of science fiction but Rosewater had an interesting premise.

It’s set in a near-future Nigeria where aliens have landed and occupy a biodome. Rosewater is the community that grew up around them. The biodome opens its doors twice a year and exposure apparently heals people with diseases. It can also, however, cause bodies to heal where the mind is dead and these ‘reanimates’ haunt the community.

The most intriguing effect of the aliens is that they are believed to have led to a fungus-like ‘xenoform’ which leads those who are susceptible to experience a heightened level of empathy, which almost amounts to mind reading. One such is Kaaro. Kaaro is a nuanced, morally ambiguous character. He now has both a day job and moonlights as an interrogator but we see through flashbacks how he was once a petty thief who used his gift to work as a ‘finder’, a kind of unofficial private investigator, before being investigated.

This is the element of the story I found most intriguing. In the current political culture, where the ability to ‘other’ anyone who stands in your way appears to be a strength, empathy can feel like a burden rather than a gift. With Kaaro, you see both elements, and how it can be used to harm as well as help (as an agent he assists at interrogations because he can vividly see and experience what the suspect remembers).

This book has numerous strands. I was fascinated by the vividly realised world and the allusions it draws between magic/witchcraft and the powers of people like Kaaro. I also liked the fact that Kaaro could block his powers by using anti-fungal cream, combining the magical and the banal! Sometimes, though, I felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information – about the aliens, about how other countries have reacted, about the crimes and political upheavals Kaaro is investigating, his personal life, and a mysterious illness which seems to be infecting Kaaro and his fellow empaths.

While one of the sub-plots wraps up, a lot of the story is left unresolved. It is clearly marketed as the first volume of a trilogy so that’s fair enough, but if, like me, you’re just dipping your toe in the genre this might not be for you. If, however, you’re in it for the long haul, this is a well-written, complex and pacy book.

Rosewater is a really interesting take on psychic ability and the extra-terrestrial, with strong characters and a lively universe, but for me it was just too long - it could have done with sharper editing to prevent my losing interest at a number of points.

After I signed up to review this book, I started seeing it everywhere. But sadly I did not really understand the hype.

This book takes a whole new perspective on 'sensitives' and mind-reading abilities, with the cause being an alien fungus. I liked this - I especially liked the amount of detail included, the scientific terms and explanations.

But as far as the actual plot is concerned... I was completely lost. I was bored, and I had no idea who was who by the end of it. I just got too confused by it all. There were emotional moments, but I never really connected with the characters. This may all just be my own personal preference - I'm sure other people will enjoy it far more than I did. But I did not particularly enjoy it, sadly, and am giving it 2.5 - 3 stars.

‪Rosewater by Tade Thompson https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2018/10/15/rosewater-by-tade-thompson‬

Science fiction and mysteries do tend to go together. From the simple stories of Asimov’s robots to the urban fantasy genre’s many detectives many novels explore how either science or magic can further complicate a mystery beyond the rational world (plus it’s more fun to think of the impossible Mr Holmes). In this fantastic novel Tade Thompson provides the reader with an intriguing thriller set in the future, merging telepathy with alien first contact in a web of multiple plotlines that you will completely want to unravel and discover the real cause of all these events lying in the heart of Rosewater.

In 2066 Rosewater is one of the most advanced cities in Nigeria a centre of scientific discovery where an alien presence has for the last ten years been slowly observed by the government and a magnet for so many people wanting to change their lives. This is the alien’s third arrival on Earth and this time takes the form of a biodome that annually opens a portal releasing a mysterious energy that can heal the sick or even make the dead return mindless and violent. The world is on the brink of China and Russia battling for power as the US many years ago mysteriously vanished after the first sign of alien life was discovered in 2012.

Most surprisingly telepaths have moved from myth to a valued resource that governments are seeking to use for their own ends from bank security to espionage. The world is on the edge of a change, but no one seems clear on exactly what nor if the change is welcome. In Rosewater one of the most powerful telepaths is Kaaro who for all his life has had several interactions at key moments in the city’s short history ever since its creation. His latest mission doesn’t go to plan but reveals that telepaths are under threat and mysterious presences in the telepath mindscape seem to want Kaaro for their own purposes.

This novel is an amazing puzzle box where all these mysteries are outlined and through Kaaro’s narration we see two sides of the city. In 2066 Kaaro is a reserved cynical but ultra-confident agent but in his youth, he was an arrogant thief using his powers for his own gain – because of his talents the government soon realises he could be the clue to finding a mysterious woman who disappear in thin air Kaaro’s mission however made him end up staying for the rest of his life. Rosewater offers him immense opportunities but also unfinished business. Through the narration of his younger and older selves we slowly piece together what exactly is Kaaro’s role in what is turning to be a deadly game for so many people he has been involved with. There is clever mechanism in rotating chapters seeding the plots of both past and future until there is a final conclusion explaining how these two parts of his life are tied together at last.

I think Tade Thompson has achieved that perfect balance of inventive ideas, character and plot. The old SF trope of telepathy is given a refreshingly new rational cause which really suits it’s 21st century setting when you find the cause; the exploration of what a telepath is capable of and what uses they would serve is both smart and terrifyingly plausible and this is really achieved through the way we see Kaaro. Because of the time jumps we get the young know it all who is living on his wits and then through the experiences we are about to discover we get an older more guarded and hurt Kaaro who while keen to judge the guy he used to be is still recognisably the core of the same man - prone to take the harder path and not going to obey the rules if he thinks its not in his interests. He’s engaging but flawed and its good to see the book recognises Kaaro’s sense of masculinity leads to mistakes that will haunt him. In fact, the initial factor that sets him on a better path is the revelation that there is a larger telepath population out there who provide him shelter and in one very touching scene a warning that his is very close to making the same mistakes another telepath made which really does change his life. SF thrillers can tend towards the clinical, but this book offers surprising moments of tenderness and introspection that invests you in Kaaro’s story and potential for redemption.

Rosewater is one of the most intriguing science fiction novels I’ve read this year; it’s a classic noir plot set in a future world but its beautifully thought out in terms of worldbuilding as we see how this alternate 21st century grew into existence and where it’s going – all of which sounds plausible to our eyes. It is also refreshing to see a SF world that doesn’t resemble New York and a reminder that aliens are perhaps unlikely to miss one the largest continents on the planet in favour of the centre of Hollywood. Overall if you enjoy getting under the skin of a great thriller and see how the future can offer both horrors and wonders. This is definitely a book you should be looking to snap up as one of the best reads of the year. I very much look forward to seeing what other tales Thompson has to tell.

Set in Nigeria in 2066, Rosewater is a town that has formed around an alien bio-dome. Health tourists flock there once a year for healing and, since the arrival of aliens in London in 2012, there has been a rise in the number of psychics - or sensitives - who have access to peoples' thoughts, motivations and can manipulate minds.

It's a great setting, packed with Nigerian culture and influences and really dwells on the 'science' of sci fi. It felt like a very educational read, alongside the intrigue of secret government organisations and world politics.

It's a shame that (and particularly through he eyes of the narrator) the women are only ever beautiful and enigmatic sex objects - at one point it is literally written that 'her story is for another tale' - and I really don't understand how Aminat and Kaaro have any kind of relationship.