CTRL+S by Andy Briggs

Welcome to the blog tour for Andy Briggs' debut novel for adults.

CTRL+S is firmly in the cyber-future arm of the Sci-fi genre. The story concerns Theo and the search for his shady (or so you're led to believe) mother - but that's just the simple version.

To go deeper, the setting is the thing. It is the near future and things are looking up for the human race - global warming is reversed, the bee colonies are in great condition and smoking is illegal. The main entertainment is an online virtual world called SPACE and, to be fair, SPACE is the star of this book. As a virtual world it is one of the best created in Sci-fi.

Anyhoo, back to the story. Theo (our hero) is pulled from a trip to the virtual London of SPACE by a call on his mother's rig (think vr headset amped up to the max). It's not good... "Bring me what you owe me by tomorrow or we'll start taking it out on your son - in many and varied painful ways" Not knowing what his mother has got into Theo and his friends are on a hiding to nothing but somehow, in this world and in SPACE, they must get answers, escape the bad guys (real and virtual) and handle all the peril both worlds can throw their way.

So, in a story like this, the world is all and Briggs has done a cracking job here with both the real world and SPACE. Where SPACE is all futuristic and shiny (everything you'd want from an online existence really) the real world feels kinda grubby... and I like it.

It's fair to say the pace never really lets up and the feel is rather cinematic (not surprising as the author is a screenwriter among other things) so I wouldn't be surprised to see a big screen version of this soon.

A cracking debut and an author to watch

4/5 stars