What does future archaeology look like? Well in Aliya Whiteley’s latest output, Three Eight One, it’s 2314 – The Age Of Curation – and archaeology involves digging into data and making sense of the metadata of the past. No small task, but when Rowena Savalas is tasked with curating parts of the internet in its 21st century infancy, a mystery unfolds that spans time and space itself starting with a story posted in 2024.

As a pattern emerges and the significance of the numbers 3-8-1 make themselves known, Savalas, via the story’s protagonist Fairly, finds herself on a mythical adventure that will have profound consequences on her own sense of being and could unravel a secret history of the world.

If you are familiar with Whiteley’s previous work, such as the awesome Skyward Inn, you will already be aware of her uncanny ability to combine the fantastical and the magical with more traditional science fiction elements, along with unbridled slabs of emotion – but Three Eight One ups the ante on all fronts. It bombards you with fragments of happiness at every turn of a page, culminating in what could prove to be one of the books of the year: superb, on every level.