About 3/4 of the way through the book, you’re finally told why the way ahead in business is (literally) driving your competitors off the road. I realise a hefty chunk of exposition at the start would have sucked, but I went through 300 pages finding the whole thing a bit too far-fetched. Hmm. That is, while I can accept elves and wizards at face value, when something is presented as the near-future, it’s actually harder to engage that suspension of disbelief without some hint of how we get from here to there.

Otherwise, the book is a bleak look at a future where the money men rule the world (much like today, then!) but investment is in foreign wars. Forecasts suggest it’s more profitable to support the rebels? Then we’ll arm them against the current regime, or vice-versa – whatever makes the money.

London has become a giant slum, with only those employed by the investment companies able to afford to live out of gang-run ghettos, or to afford petrol – meaning the roads are all but empty. It’s a somewhat eerie mental image, really!

While mainly reminding me of Mad Max, there are themes here of politics and morals, and also what it takes to break a marriage down. A slightly odd mix, in many ways, but it almost works. I say almost because that lack of up-front explanation really did take away from me buying in for most of the book, and the sudden explanation – while satisfyingly, “Oh, right” had already bypassed most of the motor carnage.

I’ve only just finished this one, and it’s left me with that post-read tightly wound ball of intense, opposite emotions. That cold, churning feeling, as present in the pit of the stomach as it is in the mind, only great works of fiction leave you with.

In the end, there is no redemption for Chris Faulkner. The internal conflict of this young suit is unlikely to continue – he puts it best in the book’s final line of dialogue: There isn’t anything you can do anymore. There’s nothing you can do anymore to stop men like us!

The climax was a pure shot of adrenaline which eventually produced in me a feeling of sweet sickness very few novels have yet to produce.

This one succeeds on so many levels…

Market Forces was a good read… good, not great. The hero, Chris Faulkner is similar to Takeshi Kovacs, but not quite, in that he’s definitely a flawed/human hero.

I had a little trouble of the premise you were just supposed to accept for a good portion of the book without explanation that, in the future, promotions will be determined by whether or not you can drive you adversary off the road, preferably killing them.

But, in the end, it was a good read for the train.