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Finished Reading “A Country of Ghosts”

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Book Cover of "A Country of Ghosts" showing large victorian-era city built at the top of a waterfall.
Cover art by Juan Carlos Barquet, published by AK Press. Used here for commentary purposes; not covered by this site’s CC BY-SA license.

“A Country of Ghosts” by Margaret Killjoy is an interesting novel that speculates how an anarchist society might function and defend itself against aggression. I’m not exactly sure what genre to classify it as… fantasy? speculative? utopian? It’s set in a fictional, Victorian era world where an imperial power is beginning to expand into an arctic, mountainous region inhabited by a kind of confederation of anarchist cities and villages. It follows around a journalist from the invading empire as he learns about the society and gradually works to become accepted into it. While it’s set in a fictional world, some of the countries and societies share attributes with past and present societies (British Empire, Zapatistas, Rojava, etc), so they seem somewhat plausible. I recommend it, and it’s not too long of a read.

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