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Newport City #1
Fleshers
'I’m a flesher through and through. I do all the fleshers things. Fall in love, cry, laugh, rage to the trance mobs. All the things that back in Newport City they envy us for, all the authentic things that they don’t know how to do any more because their DNA is so clean and squeaky.
I’ve got all the feelings.
And feelings are trouble. I know that too.'
Dez is a flesher, scraping a living in the banns of Newport. When she accidentally kills a cop during a routine raid and then discovers that Newport City OpSec is planning to exterminate millions of fleshers, everything begins to unravel.
She and her family are determined to stop the cull, but their only allies are the bent cop Brian Mac and a shadowy group called the Alchems. What chance does this unlikely band of renegades have against the full force of OpSec? What follows will test them to their limits, as they’re plunged into the most desperate struggle of their lives.
The first in a dazzling new science fiction series from best-selling fantasy author Alison Croggon and acclaimed playwright Daniel Keene.
“Fleshers holds a mirror to current societal disparities and ugly elitism, not unlike young adult novels The Hunger Games and Divergent…A book that draws readers through an action-packed, multi-layered narrative and will leave them with the desire to learn more about the complex and unusual characters.” Books+Publishing
I’ve got all the feelings.
And feelings are trouble. I know that too.'
Dez is a flesher, scraping a living in the banns of Newport. When she accidentally kills a cop during a routine raid and then discovers that Newport City OpSec is planning to exterminate millions of fleshers, everything begins to unravel.
She and her family are determined to stop the cull, but their only allies are the bent cop Brian Mac and a shadowy group called the Alchems. What chance does this unlikely band of renegades have against the full force of OpSec? What follows will test them to their limits, as they’re plunged into the most desperate struggle of their lives.
The first in a dazzling new science fiction series from best-selling fantasy author Alison Croggon and acclaimed playwright Daniel Keene.
“Fleshers holds a mirror to current societal disparities and ugly elitism, not unlike young adult novels The Hunger Games and Divergent…A book that draws readers through an action-packed, multi-layered narrative and will leave them with the desire to learn more about the complex and unusual characters.” Books+Publishing
356 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2018
18 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Alison Croggon
55 books1,729 followersAlison Croggon is the award winning author of the acclaimed fantasy series The Books of Pellinor. You can sign up to her monthly newsletter and receive a free Pellinor story at alisoncroggon.com
Her most recent book is Fleshers, the first in a dazzling new SF series co-written with her husband, acclaimed playwright Daniel Keene. Her latest Pellinor book, The Bone Queen, was a 2016 Aurealis Awards Best Young Adult Book finalist. Other fantasy titles include Black Spring (shortlisted for the Young People's Writing Award in the 2014 NSW Premier's Literary Awards) and The River and the Book, winner of the Wilderness Society's prize for Environmental Writing for Children.
She is a prize-winning poet and theatre critic,, and has released seven collections of poems. As a critic she was named Geraldine Pascall Critic of the Year in 2009. She also writes opera libretti, and the opera she co-wrote with Iain Grandage was Vocal/Choral Work of the Year in the 2015 Art Music Awards. Her libretto for Mayakovsky, score by Michael Smetanin, was shortlisted in the Drama Prize for the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. She lives in Melbourne..
Her most recent book is Fleshers, the first in a dazzling new SF series co-written with her husband, acclaimed playwright Daniel Keene. Her latest Pellinor book, The Bone Queen, was a 2016 Aurealis Awards Best Young Adult Book finalist. Other fantasy titles include Black Spring (shortlisted for the Young People's Writing Award in the 2014 NSW Premier's Literary Awards) and The River and the Book, winner of the Wilderness Society's prize for Environmental Writing for Children.
She is a prize-winning poet and theatre critic,, and has released seven collections of poems. As a critic she was named Geraldine Pascall Critic of the Year in 2009. She also writes opera libretti, and the opera she co-wrote with Iain Grandage was Vocal/Choral Work of the Year in the 2015 Art Music Awards. Her libretto for Mayakovsky, score by Michael Smetanin, was shortlisted in the Drama Prize for the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. She lives in Melbourne..
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 4, 2018
I find inventive world building and fresh characters hard to resist, and Fleshers offers plenty of both. The setting for this YA dystopian sci-fi is a city walled off by the Veil, to protect it from a world overwhelmed by toxicity. The environment outside the Veil is full of deadly airborne viruses, which either destroy you instantly or modify you forever as they splice with your DNA. Sixteen-year-old Dez, the daughter of the family at the centre of the story, has experienced the devastating effects of exposure to the rogue nanobots. My favourite of the characters, Dez is flawed and real and a worthy protagonist for the trials ahead.
Told in a clear, gritty style from the point of view of two fleshers (those born through natural reproduction) and one pinker (clone), the plot unfolds at a fast pace with some scenes verging on horror as the characters encounter grotesque manifestations of the damage wrought through toxicity. However their struggles are interspersed with plenty of warm family moments and camaraderie.
The authors have taken the tech of today and imagined what a future might hold if development continues apace without safeguards – especially for those at the poorer end of society. What I found most shocking was that what we may have dismissed as wild imagination twenty years ago edges closer to the realm of possibility. A timely and thought-provoking read which I can easily imagine up on the big screen.
Told in a clear, gritty style from the point of view of two fleshers (those born through natural reproduction) and one pinker (clone), the plot unfolds at a fast pace with some scenes verging on horror as the characters encounter grotesque manifestations of the damage wrought through toxicity. However their struggles are interspersed with plenty of warm family moments and camaraderie.
The authors have taken the tech of today and imagined what a future might hold if development continues apace without safeguards – especially for those at the poorer end of society. What I found most shocking was that what we may have dismissed as wild imagination twenty years ago edges closer to the realm of possibility. A timely and thought-provoking read which I can easily imagine up on the big screen.
April 29, 2018
I absolutely loved the world building in this book. Looking forward to the next book in the series.
March 28, 2021
A dystopian spec-fic page-turner. Had me hooked from the first page and, via the three first-person POVs, drew me into the emotions and immediacy of the narrative. Not a wasted word. My only tiny gripe? That Fleshers and Pinkers aren't a single novel. Congratulations to Alison Croggon and Daniel Keene on a ripping yarn.
December 23, 2018
Really enjoyed this one. A different take on the dystopian future. Told in three points of view which I just loved. The characters where raw frail tough and gritty all rolled in together
February 3, 2020
I enjoyed this book. It's cyberpunk plus shapers plus dread diseases set in a future where human beings are the odd ones out.
March 4, 2021
Started out great, but fell apart a bit halfway through and lost a handle on its plot.
July 3, 2020
“Every flesher knows that their neighbors’ lives are as hard as their own, that we all face the same choices every day. That doesn’t make us hard or unfeeling or the choices we have to make any easier, it makes us realists. And there’s a generosity in that common knowledge, a kind of forgiveness.”
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I just finished my reread of Fleshers and I am REELING. This book y’all. It’s just so freakin’ good. I’ll be honest, going into this reread I didn’t remember much other than it being a diverse sci-fi story written by my favorite author. Y’all, Fleshers is so much more than that. Fleshers is a story about systemic racism. Fleshers is a story about queer folx who are searching for their safe place. Fleshers is a story about police brutality. Fleshers is a story about protests and riots and oppressed peoples fighting back. Fleshers is a gift of a novel, and I would highly suggest reading it before the sequel comes out later this year. It’s so sadly topical for what is going on in our world right now — what has been going on for years, centuries, but is currently in the spotlight.
*note/disclaimer - Alison and Daniel are both white authors and as a white reader, I want to make it very clear that I highly support BIPOC authors telling their own stories and having their own agency, and those stories should absolutely come first. I believe that this book was crafted with a lot of love and respect, but please feel free to call me out if you disagree. I understand that it’s not my place to decide that.
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I just finished my reread of Fleshers and I am REELING. This book y’all. It’s just so freakin’ good. I’ll be honest, going into this reread I didn’t remember much other than it being a diverse sci-fi story written by my favorite author. Y’all, Fleshers is so much more than that. Fleshers is a story about systemic racism. Fleshers is a story about queer folx who are searching for their safe place. Fleshers is a story about police brutality. Fleshers is a story about protests and riots and oppressed peoples fighting back. Fleshers is a gift of a novel, and I would highly suggest reading it before the sequel comes out later this year. It’s so sadly topical for what is going on in our world right now — what has been going on for years, centuries, but is currently in the spotlight.
*note/disclaimer - Alison and Daniel are both white authors and as a white reader, I want to make it very clear that I highly support BIPOC authors telling their own stories and having their own agency, and those stories should absolutely come first. I believe that this book was crafted with a lot of love and respect, but please feel free to call me out if you disagree. I understand that it’s not my place to decide that.
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February 19, 2018ARC for Books+Publishing.
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December 17, 2018This book is an entry in the 2018 Aurealis Awards, for which I am a judge. Any review will be withheld until the results of the awards are announced.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews