I have such a writer crush on Claire North – (I ❤ her!) and I have yet to read anything by her that I didn’t at least like and usually love. Like all her novels, Sweet Harmony takes a ‘what if’ idea as the central concept and then builds a world around it.
In this case, the what if is ‘what if nanobots were real and everybody who could afford them made their bodies perfect’ . All the knock on effects and follow up questions you might think of on the subject are explored in the experience of the central character.
If you could eat ice-cream and chocolate cake all day and stay slim and healthy, would you? Would you exercise if you didn’t need to to be healthy? Would you make your face/skin/teeth/hair/figure etc ‘perfect’? Would we still need hospitals and health care workers if nanobots could cure everything? How much would they cost? Who could afford it? What would happen if you stopped being able to pay the monthly subscriptions?
Therein lies the tale, and it’s a cracking good one at that!
Sarah Wray Writer 