Published 10th April 2025 from Orenda Books.
From the cover of the book:
Living forever can be lethal…
Ruth is a law-abiding elder, working out her national service, but she has secrets.
Her tireless research into the disease that killed her young daughter had an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a vaccine against old age. Just one jab a year reverses your biological clock, guaranteeing a long, healthy life.
But Ruth's cure was hijacked by her colleague, Erik Grundleger, who hungers for immortality, and the SuperJuve – a premium upgrade – was created, driving human lifespan to a new high. The wealthy elite who take it are dubbed Supers, and the population begins to skyrocket.
Then, a perilous side-effect of the SuperJuve emerges, with catastrophic consequences, and as the planet is threatened, the population rebels, and laws are passed to restore order: life ends at 120. Supers are tracked down by Omnicide investigators like Mara, and executed…
Mara has her own reasons for hunting Supers, and she forms an unlikely alliance with Ruth to find Grundleger.
But Grundleger has been working on something even more radical and is one step ahead, with a deadly surprise in store for them both…
***********
Ruth is quietly living out the last years of her life doing national service, until the time comes for her Transcendence on her 120th birthday. Her friends and colleagues have no idea of the secret she is keeping - that many years ago, her research into the cruel disease that killed her daughter was the spark for the discovery of the anti-aging vaccine that has become part of their lives. One jab a year is now all it takes to reverse the aging process, guaranteeing a long and healthy life.
Ruth has good reason to hide her past, as her former partner Erik Grundleger subverted her research by creating a controversial premium upgrade for the wealthy elite, SuperJuve, offering immortality to those who could afford it. With a growing population and dwindling resources, the world rebelled against the rich Supers taking advantage of the poor and vulnerable in an effort to live for ever.
When it was discovered that SuperJuve also came with the less desireable side effect of psychosis, new laws were passed to ban its use, and limit the human life span. Omnicide detectives like Mara Black, with reasons of her own to hate Supers, now spend their time tracking them down and bringing them to justice. When an arrest brings with it the shocking news that Grundleger, once believed dead, is still alive and embarking on an even more extreme project, Mara teams up with Ruth to track him down. Can they stop him before a fresh horror is unleashed upon the world?
A new Eve Smith novel is always an exciting prospect, as she has an uncanny knack of looking at the direction we are all heading and spinning the kind of near future 'what if' story so believable you can taste its disturbingly bitter edge.
In The Cure, Smith brings a little bit of every one of her previous novels to craft a cautionary tale that makes a particularly apt companion piece to her last book, One, with its emphasis on population control policies. Switching her sharp and insightful focus from the cradle to the grave, she speculates how the development of anti-aging gene therapies could cause havoc for a world ravaged by climate change - adding extra bite by mixing in a storyline about unregulated treatments that offer immortality to the wealthy elite, with a side order of psychosis that is particularly dangerous given the political and financial heft of the target audience.
The story moves back and forth in time, from the perspectives of Ruth and Mara: one involved in the discovery of the anti-aging therapy (and its legacy), and the other tasked with tracking down errant Supers for emotional reasons of her own. Smith leans even more heavily into the thriller genre, weaving her speculative genius into a tale that thrums with suspense, drama, and superb tension. The comparison of her writing to the late, great Michael Crichton is more justified than ever before, with a cracking plot clearly based on in-depth research, and with all the thrills and spills of a first-class page-turner. Lovely echoes of the master of the unsettling concept, Ira Levin, pleasingly abound here too.
Smith's favourite themes run through the story adding substance in the way she does so well. Climate change, over-population, waning resources, migration, poverty, power, profiteering, exploitation of the vulnerable, public opinion, and the subversion of therapies designed to benefit humankind (in a classic 'on the shoulders of giants' way) serve to provoke your thoughts. There are some fascinating new angles here for you to ponder as well in the idea that an aging population no longer plagued with cancer and geriatric conditions will bring about a shift in the treatments that are readily available, and how this might affect those who are left behind in the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots.
I adored this book from the compelling first page to the discomfiting last, totally caught up in the twists and turns of the best story yet by one of my favourite speculative authors. Where will Eve Smith turn her prescient attention next? I cannot wait to find out.
And if any TV/film producers are listening: this book is ripe for a blockbuster adaptation, please and thank you...
The Cure is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats. You can support indie publishing by buying direct from Orenda Books HERE.
Thank you to Orenda Books for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
Longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize and described by Waterstones as "an exciting new voice in crime fiction", Eve’s debut novel The Waiting Rooms, set in the aftermath of an antibiotic resistance crisis, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize First Novel Award and was selected as a Book of the Month by Eric Brown in The Guardian who compared her writing to Michael Crichton’s.
Eve’s previous job as COO of an environmental charity took her to research projects across Asia, Africa and the Americas, and she has an ongoing passion for wild creatures, wild science and far-flung places. When she’s not writing she’s racing across fields after her dog, trying to organise herself and her family, or off exploring somewhere new.
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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