Light Over Liskeard

"Light Over Liskeard is a dystopian and futuristic story. It’s mostly set on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, which I loved. The conjuring of that landscape, especially the wildlife, was beautifully done. We don’t know how far in the future this world is, but it’s dominated by artificial intelligence, and the effect that has had on human beings is different for each individual person. It’s about a character called Q, who is a quantum cryptographer and works for the government. You get this sense that there’s an impending crisis for humanity. This small group of people take themselves off to Bodmin Moor. It wasn’t quite a prepping-for-the-end-of-the-world story, but it had elements of that. Because of his job, you sense Q is going to be called on to try and avert disaster. What we, the judges, particularly loved about it was the incredible imagination and ideas that had gone into the story and building that world. I particularly loved the landscape and wildlife, and the contrast between that and this very strange world human beings have found themselves in. There’s both an internal adventure, a personal growth element for the main character – the way he sees himself as a man really changes over the course of the book – and there’s the bigger picture of impending disaster for humanity. What was interesting was that each of the characters in the book responded to that differently and in quite original ways. It’s a very original story."