You want some weird futurism? Start reading Company Town

Madeline Ashby's new novel, Company Town, starts out like your average futuristic novel about a ninja bodyguard hired to protect unionized sex workers on a city-sized oil drilling platform off the coast of Canada. Then it starts getting weird. I'm talking time-hopping, artificial superintelligence weird; serial killers with invisibility suits weird. And I haven't even gotten to the part about the traumatized children of K-pop stars. If you like your science fiction kaleidoscopically strange yet infused with astute observations about where current technology might take us, you need to pick up a copy of Company Town right now.

Our hero, Hwa, is a martial arts expert with a weakness that turns out to be her greatest strength. A neurological disease has left her face disfigured, which means that she is rendered virtually invisible on the ubiquitous augmented reality systems that everyone wears. She uses this to her advantage, becoming a kind of ghost in the surveillance machine as she protects women in the sex workers union. As long as the oil keeps flowing, business is good for the ladies, and all Hwa has to worry about are drunk johns who refuse to pay. But when a mysterious fire destroys one of the oil rigs, Hwa loses her brother—and a new company called Lynch, Ltd. steps in to buy out the struggling city. Things get complicated.

Ashby's novel isn't just a simple tale of good guys and bad guys. Almost immediately, Hwa's loyalties are divided and it's never clear whether she's on the right side of justice. Because of her unique skills, the Lynch security team wants to hire Hwa to protect the company heir, Joel. It will mean a considerable boost in salary and room to move up, but she'll have to leave her working-class community behind. Plus, the sex workers need her more than ever, because a terrifying serial killer has been picking them off one by one. But Hwa is torn, especially when she discovers that Joel is actually a good kid who wants to help his family get into the alternative energy business. It's not Joel's fault that the family is being targeted for destruction by AIs from the future. To top it off, she kind of has the hots for Lynch Security Chief Daniel.

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