Every now and again a book comes along and surprises you, some by being far better than I expected them to be and some by being completely and utterly awful. I'm very glad to say that this is most definitely in the first of these categories – this is simply wonderful.

The world where this story takes place is, for the most part, a medieval style world, although with some advanced technologies here and there. Flintreco Eltarn (Flint) is the main character in this book. He is an adolescent in a village renowned for their production of mutts – an artificially mutated sub-human race who form the slave-class of this world's society.

He is also the son of a violent man, and he has lived a life of constant beatings. One day however, his beloved sister Amberlinetreco (Amber) disapears. Flint's first thought is that their father has mutated Amber and sold her to the mutt trade. And so he leaves home and sets out to find her.

He visits a religious-like community – the Riverwalkers – lives with them a while and adapts many of their ways. He travels on to Farsamy, the major town and location of the mutt market where he believes he will discover Amber.

His journey allows us, as readers, to explore this fantastically rich world. Keith Brooke has built an amazing society, one that is truly a pleasure to visit. But he's not done this world building and the expense of either the plot or characters. This is a complete novel - I just could not find fault with it in any way.

I'd never really been all that familiar with this author, I think I may have read some short stories by him in magazines some years back. This however was the first of his novels I have ever had the pleasure of reading – and a great pleasure it was. I simply cannot say how much I was impressed with the writing in this book.

Synopsis
Genetopia is the story of Flint, a young man in search of his possibly-abducted sister in a far future where nano- and biotechnology have influenced and accelerated the evolution of humans and their strangely altered surroundings. In this world, illness is always to be feared as symptoms can be a part of the transformation process: re-engineering active genes; mutating germ cells; migrating traits from species to species through plague and fever. This is a world where organic AIs grow in the jungle, either worshiped or feared, where trees sing to each other and new houses are grown to order. To find his sister, Flint must travel through communities and wildlands no normal person would brave. Flint's story is the story of the last true humans, and of the struggles between those who want to defend their heritage and those who choose to embrace the new.

Genetopia will appeal to the core science-fiction market, but also to those interested in environmental, political, biological, and anthropological issues.