Hybrids

Abandoned by his parents when he catches the Creep virus, 15-year-old Johnny has been living rough for two year when the beautiful Kestrella, who is also Creep positive, tracks him down. She needs his skills to help her find her mother who has disappeared and there is no better hacker around than Johnny. Thanks to Creep, he has literally become a walking computer as the virus has taken over his body, changing living parts into metal, plastic and minerals. Instead of eyes and a mouth, Johnny now has a computer screen attached to his head and a computer generated voice. He communicates by displaying things on his monitor.

Johnny tries to hide from the world inside his hoodie. Kestrella, whose hand has turned into a mobile phone, finds it easier to pass for a ‘normal’ person. In an obvious parallel with the AIDS pandemic, Thorpe depicts a society where, far from being helped and supported, Creep sufferers are stigmatised, blamed and persecuted for their illness. There are vigilante groups. The Gene police tag them and there are sinister rumours about the fate of those taken to the Centre for Genetic Rehabilitation. And was the virus created and then unleashed on the population by the very drugs company that Kestrella’s father is involved with?

Thorpe creates an inventive dystopian world which plays with the role of technology in our lives and as part of our humanness. The plot hurtles along with stock characters of the good, cynical or sinister variety. Parents, both Johnny’s and Kestrella’s, are depicted as utterly self-absorbed and selfish. This debut novel ends up being something of a hybrid itself – it touches on ideas about the individual and society but these are then submerged in favour of a rattling adventure plot.