Tim Major's YA SF novel, Machineries of Mercy, is getting ready for its summer release! Designer Ben Keen has prepared the new cover for the second edition of the book.
Machineries of Mercy is set in a dystopian UK where juvenile prison has been taken to a whole different level of reality.
As this is the Official Edition, it means that purchasing any other edition of the book, from a different publisher, will result in the author not receiving compensation, so please be mindful and look out for the Luna edition.
The book will be released on the 18th of August and pre-orders will open in late Spring.
Machineries of Mercy
In the idyllic village of Touchstone, the birds are singing and everyone is happy.
But Ethan knows it’s not real.
England may be ruined and plagued with riots, but Touchstone is more dangerous still.
Tim said: "Looking again at Machineries of Mercy now, I see traces of so much that I loved when I was growing up and continue to love now: theme parks, open-world video games, cosy catastrophes, fictional havoc in idyllic locations. And it’s no coincidence that the virtual village in the novel is named Touchstone. The novel draws upon films that meant a lot to me: Tron, Battle Royale, Existenz and, particularly, Westworld. As a teenager, long before its celebrated revival as an HBO TV series, I watched Westworld endlessly, never tiring of it. The idea of a theme park attraction turning out to be deadly is potent enough, but add in a murderous robot cowboy and a final act in which said cowboy rampages through a reproduction of Ancient Rome… it’s heady stuff. Other key influences were from TV: Russell T Davies’ 1991 Children’s BBC serial Dark Season (in which schoolchildren are gifted computers that take over their minds) and the 1976 Doctor Who story ‘The Deadly Assassin’ (in which the Doctor battles for survival inside the Matrix, a virtual-reality nightmare landscape, and which features what I consider the most terrifying scenes in the entirety of Doctor Who).
I suppose all I’m saying is that I think I would have enjoyed reading Machineries of Mercy as a teen. And I certainly enjoyed writing it as an adult.
Machineries of Mercy was first published in late 2018, but took a strange path before and after publication. I’m very grateful to Luna Press for giving the novel a second life now that I’ve regained rights to its publication.
No matter your age, I hope you’ll enjoy reading it, too."