iNSiDE

Naya has always lived inside the city of Emas, which changes and adapts constantly to the needs of its citizens, seducing them with a life of ease and plenty. Outside is strictly forbidden and a deeply entrenched propaganda machine exercises Orwellian control by means of fear, warning of the Spiravits-a race of murderous criminals who allegedly seek only to hunt down and kill the inhabitants of Emas and take over the city. The fiction is consolidated by the use of military cadets trained to hunt down and kill these alien beings. It is Naya’s ambition to be a fully-fledged member of the NSDE and, like other aspirants, she has undergone brutal and dehumanising training throughout her entire life in order to deal with what she has been indoctrinated to believe is a terrifying threat to a secure and peaceful existence inside the city and, indeed, to the fabric of the city itself.

However hard she works and trains she falls short of the standards expected by her mother, who is the General, the supreme controller of Emas. When the General proposes to send her on a spying mission outside the city walls and into the very heart of the Spiravit community to discover their weaknesses she accepts, desperate to prove her worth and thus take her place in the ranks of the NSDE. In order that her exodus from Emas can have credibility she must be branded a criminal and undertake a vicious gladiatorial-style hand to hand arena combat with a captured Spiravit, with whom she flees.

Outside proves to be very different to the toxic mythology taught inside Emas and as Naya begins to peel back the lies she has been told she realises that she wants to be accepted by this community, built around the idea of family, self-sufficiency and working with Nature instead of seeking to control-and, ultimately, destroy it. Naya begins to develop emotionally – unheard of in Emas – and believes that what she has learned from the information she has been sent by the General to collect can be used to change the perception of the Spiravits for the benefit of all.

The narrative is thrilling, with raids into Emas to acquire the essential things with which to support life which the outsiders are denied, but it is also threaded through with the compassion exercised by the outsiders and their solidarity in the strength of their beliefs and their desire to protect them at all costs. At the very heart of the story is Naya’s betrayal by her mother for her own ends and her realisation that she can no longer be part of a city where truth is constantly manipulated and distorted. Outside, she finally finds the emotional support she has never had and she leaves the city to begin a life of hardship and uncertainty with the knowledge that the forces of goodness are on her side.