Here’s the second book that, coincidentally, I’ve read recently about twins. However, unlike Heinlein’s Time for the Stars (written in 1956 and reviewed HERE) Laura’s False Hearts is a much more contemporary near-future novel.
False Hearts is the tale of conjoined twins Taema and Tila, who now live in a near-future San Francisco, and are physically separated after being conjoined for sixteen years. As I understand is often the case in real life, after a decade apart they have developed personalities that are polar opposites of each other – Tila is the loud, ebullient, socially adept one, Taema is the quieter, more studious one.
When Tila turns up at Taema’s house covered in blood and is then arrested on suspicion of murder, Taema realises that her sister might not have been telling her the truth about her job – an escort at the salubrious nightclub, Zenith. To gain Tila’s freedom Taema is persuaded to take Taema’s identity and go undercover for the SFPD. The police believe that the club has connections to the local crime syndicate known as the Ratel and that Tila was on the edge of something important. In this future San Francisco much of the population uses Zeal, a drug allowing for virtual reality experiences that remove the user’s aggression and anger. As a result there has not been a murder in SF for years. However, the drug scene of the future is being altered, with Zeal being replaced by a harder, much more aggressive drug, known as Verve. Whereas the common usage of Zeal reduces aggression and can be attributed for the lack of violent crime in recent years in San Francisco the new drug enhances anger and the police feel that its wider use may be the start of something big.
Based on that synopsis. it’s tempting to give the book one of those 1950’s pulp-style straplines – CRIME! MURDER! DRUGS! SEX!! – but the book is actually more deserving of such a fulsome response. What drew me in immediately was the terrific characterisation that the author creates, and especially of the twins. Laura has done well to emphasise the emotional connections between the twins and how they are still emotionally and intellectually connected, if not physically so. There’s a fine line to tread here, but Laura manages to never make it mawkish, nor overemphasised – I never felt that I was being hit over the head with the point. Instead the relationships are often subtle. There are two tales being told here – whilst we follow Taema’s escapades as Tila, Tila herself tells us of their backstory through epistolary narrative. Taema shows us what things are like now, Tila tells us how the twins got to the end of the book.
The backstory is also a little unusual and adds depth. The girls grew up as part of an isolated cult known as Mana’s Hearth, led by Mana-Ma. There the conjoined twins were both trained in lucid dreaming as part of their rituals – a skill that is useful when in the Vervescape, and may be the reason for Tila’s rise to success in the Ratel. When they leave the Hearth, to be separated, it is a psychological separation from their family and their past that occurs as well as physically from each other. Their identities, once independent, are as new, each of them given artificial hearts once separate – false hearts, if you like.
This backstory becomes important as Taema, masquerading as Tila, becomes more and more involved in the criminal underworld and involved in a plot to uncover the Ensi – leader – of the Ratel in San Francisco. This involves lots of taking drugs and travelling into mindscapes that any devotee of Philip K Dick or Timothy Leary would be proud of.
The future San Francisco setting made me think of Greg Bear’s Slant (though I know that was set in LA) and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Gold Coast trilogy. This is a book set after some sort of apocalyptic event (referred to as ‘The Great Deluge’), and Laura does well to briefly illustrate the clinically clean, almost sterile environment (think the film/TV version of Logan’s Run) with the rather grimmer Zeal lounges of downtown.
Though False Hearts is not what I initially expected, it soon became a great read. Think of Alias but set in a Philip K Dick kind of world (I’m thinking Blade Runner/Minority Report here) with lots of drugs and dreams involved. It is fast paced, and exciting, with engaging characters that I got to like a lot. The ending is emotional and appropriate. A book that does show that love can transcend all challenges.
False Hearts by Laura Lam
Published by Macmillan, June 2016
ISBN: 978 1447 286 424
386 pages
Review by Mark Yon
