How to Steal the Future

A machine called Avenir has been developed that can predict the future, but it is locked inside a maze of its own creation. Only children can enter the maze and have a chance of bringing Avenir’s secrets into the light of day, and they are being sent in two by two, just as they were in the Greek legend of the imprisoned Minotaur. And, as in the legend, they do not come out alive. Drew’s elder sister Evie is one of those victims and now Drew has volunteered to enter the labyrinth to find her. This is the story of his quest and the children he meets on the way. He knows he has only sixty-seven minutes, and the time is running down on the bracelet on his wrist, although he has no idea what might happen to him when it finally runs out. Meanwhile the labyrinth seems to have a malevolent mind of its own, its restless walls aiming to deceive and crush Drew and his companions. Edge deploys the claustrophobia and unpredictability expertly, although I can’t help feeling that this aspect would work better in a video game than a novel. However, gradually it becomes apparent that more is going on than the reader has been led to believe at the beginning, and, at the point where Drew seems to be leaning on a memory of his sister that has something to do with Alice in Wonderland and contemporary London, we are gradually introduced to an entirely new understanding of his experience, which reorientates everything that has gone before. This is an ingenious novel. The marketing blurb likens it, not unfairly, to Christopher Nolan’s Inception. But, if it is more ambitious than the science fiction thriller packaging which Macmillan has given it, it works well enough at that level too.