The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson
I would like to thank Solaris for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Solaris
Published – Out Now
Price – £18.99 hardback £7.99 Kindle ebook
It's been seventeen years since the internet crashed and left the world broken…
Auli lives on the Bellwether, a floating college safe from the conflict of the mainland, where she studies the Oracle – an uncanny girl who channels dangerous ghosts and provides lost information about the world’s seas.
Her peaceful world is shattered when her beloved mentor, Boudain, is found dead. While most aboard believe it was due to natural causes, Auli discovers hints that suggest he was not the benign leader he seemed – and that his death might be deliberate.
Surrounded by people with their own motives and secrets, Auli doesn’t know who to trust. Worse, the Oracle is attracting dangerous, mutating ghosts that threaten everyone aboard. With the Bellwether fracturing from internal and external pressures, she is forced to wrestle with a life-changing decision: save the Oracle or save the Bellwether – and all the lives that depend on it.
Please note while very much a standalone novel this story is set in the same universe as We Are All Ghosts In The Forest by Lorraine Wilson but there will be no spoilers for that excellent story here and you do not have to read either in any order
The dark side of science is a key part of the genre’s DNA from the ethics of bringing the dead back to life be it recreated creatures to dinosaurs, boosting someone’s intelligence or an allegedly amazing technology that steals work from people (ok that one is not SF). It is always tempting to say ethics are just for the characters but really science fiction is also making us as the readers to decide what is the best course of action too. In Lorraine Wilson’s intricate and compelling novel The Salt Oracle we have a claustrophobic tale where a group of scientists are keen to be the burning lantern to save the world, but their ambitions lead to revelations, betrayals and death.
In the near future, our digital world fragments, enters our world and attacks us. Power and communication are lost; we move into a much more fragmented and dangerous world and the ‘ghosts’ can destroy machinery or attack a human being consuming some or all of their flesh. However not all is lost. Scientists still want to bring some stability to the world, and they’ve found one girl can apparently harness the ghost’s ability and allow some form of communication to work. She could help again make sailors know of storms and allow communication once again to begin. This work is dangerous and threatened by people suspicious of the scientists so they now work on a floating site off in the Baltic Sea, often attracting ghosts which the various scientists need to escape the clutches of. But the girl they now call the Oracle needs constant study.
Auli is the protégé of the research leader Boudain who is about to authorise a new study – how to create more Oracles. This would make the Institute even more prized (and a bigger target). Boudain though dies the next day in mysterious circumstances. Auli is unexpectedly given Boudain’s position to the disdain of her ambitious colleagues and with only the fractured relationship she has with the head of security Raphael can she untangle this web of lies but she may also find the biggest lie is the one she has been telling herself for far too long.
One fascinating aspect is how claustrophobic this story is. Its predominantly contained on the floating rig with a tight small cast of characters we get to know. It is an academic setting and yes there are politics, personal issues and what is looking increasingly like a murderer in plain sight. Wilson keeps that mystery working all the way through the story. More strange events are raised. Is this ambition, politics, the supernatural or bad luck at work? What enhances this more is the strangeness of the location. The sea surrounds them and so no one can easily escape and then just for added measure we have the ghosts.
I really like this strange unexplained phenomenon. Parts of internet code, videos or even just pictures given huge form from children to sea monsters and there is a fascinating wrongness about their appearance in the book. Are they malevolent or just something you need to navigate around like a shark in the water? One new element in this story is their numbers, and their power are getting stronger as they near the Oracle. Is this some new science at work or something more human? When we see what one does to human flesh it really underlines how dangerous these ghosts are and every time one appears be they small or large the stakes are high and Wilson is not afraid to dispense with the cast, so we very much feel everyone is in danger at any time. The tension really rattles along at this point.
Of course, though there is something else to consider and I wonder if you spotted this I the plot summary above? We have these scientists working very hard to turn into a beacon for the return of some form of civilization. We have a world where again medicine is rare, violent groups are all around and as we see in various flashback s the toll this has had on families and the cast.. So, all their hopes rely on the Oracle in her tower, guarded, a d every day asked to commune with ghosts. A young woman who was never asked if she wanted to do this. It would be easy to just have our groups of scientists as industrialists looking for profit, but the heartbreaking here is they are largely trying to do some good, but as we find it also will give power and prestige. If civilisation is on the line, what would you sacrifice? I love how Wilson makes us have a hard look at what is really going on and asks is this what we should be doing? An ethical dilemma needs to be a dilemma and so peeling the cold truth about what is going on is a revelation.
The key to this are the three main charcetrs we follow and they’re equally fascinating. We get to dwell in the Oracle’s stream of consciousness and realise what she has lived through in the fall of everything and what she must go through every day. That again shows us the true face of the institute. But we also get to follow Auli who is a fascinating initially unconfident character. Less experienced and certainly less ambitious she has got unexpectedly into a position of power and finds herself blocked, scorned and openly insulted. But her drive for the truth and her moral conscience actually really separates her from the rest and it’s a reminder science is often about ethical questions too – yes, we could do this, but should we? She too carried the scars of the past seventeen years, but she is holding onto being able to look at herself in the mirror and so she soon becomes the key character in the story we root for.
There is also the fascinating Raphael, armed to the teeth, with a loyal crew at his command and yet also vulnerable in his own way. His relationship with Auli we can describe as complex and he too has made some moral bargains in his role of defending the institute and Auli starts to make him question was the sacrifice for them and his team worth it? How these two interact with one another and explore the wider mysteries on this rig really work well and ultimately how the plotlines intersect and get explained works really well.
None of which would not work without Wilson’s writing. I’ve been a fan for several years now and I law the way Wilson uses nature to amplify situations, here a force in conflict with people just as much as the characters get into conflicts with each other. There is both a touch of the numinous and the uncanny in this story as we try to work out is this just nature in its new digitalised form at work or something more malevolent and we’re kept worrying throughout which is worse
The Salt Oracle is deliciously dark, intimate and intricate as we get to understand the characters and their complex motivations as well as their twisting relationships with one another. You can have both the dark academic experience of feuding researchers but also a truer examination of the dark side of scientific exploration and the moral dilemmas that can easily get hidden into a desire for progress no matter the cost. While this is a book full of morally grey characters it also reminds us sometimes we ultimately have to take a stand and do what is right. Something in these times we all need to remember well. I strongly recommend you meet the Oracle!
