LAMBDA: David Musgrave’s fantastical Britain makes affecting political commentary

Lambda, the debut novel from David Musgrave, is a mindbending narrative about a young woman’s early career in an alternative Britain full of strange creatures and sentient technology. Humans co-exist (how willingly is unclear) with lambdas: semiaquatic humanoids who live in watery basements and perform undesirable jobs.

New police officer Cara Gray loses her first assignment watching the lambdas when she fails to anticipate a school bombing. A lambda rights group claims responsibility, and as Cara grows attached to them, her job is replaced by an AI program, and she’s reassigned as a community liaison officer to the lambda. A secret intelligence service approach Cara, demanding she speak to a synthetic human assassin tasked with “mitigating” the bombing suspect – or her failure to stop the attack will be exposed.

Lambda’s plot has a lot of threads to pull together, many unresolved, and an unusual structure: the action is intercut with a one-sided conversation that, for much of the novel, goes unexplained. It feels like a play being given a monologue alongside a fight scene, and at times spelt confusion. But Musgrave uses his tale to provide some affecting commentary on current political, emotional and health crises, as well as the future of technology.