The one I am telling all my friends to read. Especially the ones who miss live music, love near-future speculative fiction, and want to resist the Amazon-ing of human experience.
A thoughtful, absorbing novel full of music and friendship and the force of hope. One I'll read again.

Longer review forthcoming at www.rhianbowley.com

When this was originally published back in 2019, I don't think the author realized how quickly this book would become so close to reality!!

Set in a near-future US following a global pandemic and multiple terrorist attacks, A Song For A New Day explores life in a locked-down world. Live concerts are banned, and live music can now only be watched via the means of virtual reality. Yet, a certain few remain who still want the old normal, and have set up an underground network of live shows to keep "real" music alive.

I must admit that it was odd reading this when in the midst of a global pandemic. So many of the anxieties surrounding social distancing and lockdowns were worryingly relatable, making the book very immersive. The writing at the beginning was fantastic. I was immediately dragged into this world and I had so many questions about its past. Unfortunately, I felt that the world-building was a tad underdeveloped. We were introduced to new technologies but I never truly understood what they actually did. Additionally, it's clear that the book is set after multiple terrorist attacks, yet no detail is given regarding these past events. Whilst the story was interesting enough to hold my interest and keep me engaged, the plot did plateau off at the 50% mark. It was at this point that I think the book dragged as nothing seemed to be progressing.
I was soooooo happy to see an F/F romance!! Sci-fi is often a genre in which LGBTQ+ relationships are poorly represented - so a big big thumbs up from me for that!

Despite the alarmingly relatable nature of what is intended to be "dystopian", I enjoyed the premise of this book. I would've preferred a little more world-building and/or background, but still an enjoyable read!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review purposes.

I actually finished this book over a month ago, but I'm still not quite sure how to review it. I had previously read Sarah Pinsker's short story collections, which I mostly loved - the writing, the language - save for one story. The one on which this novel is based.

This is perhaps a little disingenuous, because I didn't <i>dislike</i> that story. I just thought it was the least exciting of the bunch, because... I'm not huge on reading about music and musicians and how music is made and about live performances (unless it's non-fiction, but even then, not in every case). And, welp, this is my problem with <i>A Song for a New Day</i>: it's a book about musicians and live performances and (to a lesser degree) music industry in a world that has survived a smallpox pandemic, and where most human interactions have moved to virtual reality. On the plus side, the writing is very good - I really enjoy Pinsker's way with language, her sensitivity - and the worldbuilding is compelling (especially given Covid). Unfortunately, in addition to all the music (and YMMV, maybe other readers will love that), the plot gets didactic in a pretty annoying way. Capitalism is BAD and big corporations are only out to get your money - oh, of course, but there's surely a way to write about it that doesn't make the reader feel like she was repeatedly hit over the head with the message.

Overall, I will be on the lookout for Pinsker's future works - I do have high hopes for her. It's just that this one wasn't exactly my cup of tea.

It's not an easy book to review because somehow it seems to be talking about our times and what is going on.
The story is gripping and enthralling, I loved how the author talks about the pleasure of music and how a society without music could be a dystopia.
The world building and the character development are excellent, I liked the storytelling and I think it's an interesting story full of food for thought.
It's recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I’ve been thinking how to approach this review for a while and maybe it’ll be best to just deal with certain aspects head on.

There comes a moment when certain books become seemingly prescient. I’d say it’s especially easy with SF: if you pay attention, notice certain trends and extrapolate from them, you’re bound to hit something that comes true eventually.

A nation-wide lockdown following an epidemic takes a special bit of synchronicity, though.

A Song for a New Day originally came out in September 2019. I didn't get around to it then. A year later, reading the opening section felt more than a little uncanny. In it, we follow Luce, a singer-songwriter on tour with her band, as she gives what turns out to be the last live performance before a string of terrorist attacks and an epidemic lead to a ban on gatherings. The ensuing chaos of trying to get home, separation from friends and loved ones, lack of information, finding out about illnesses and deaths, felt very real and affecting in light of what the world has went through in recent months.

You might want to bear that in mind when you start reading.

That being said, this isn't a book *about* the pandemic. It feels a little disorienting (after all, we are still grappling with the prospect of long-term consequences of COVID-19), but Luce's storyline soon skips to the aftermath: the epidemic doesn't seem to pose a significant threat, and yet the world is fundamentally changed by it.

We observe the changes from the perspective of the second protagonist, Rosemary, a young woman from a small town who starts out working for a thinly-veiled Amazon analogue and soon becomes a recruiting agent looking for musicians playing underground to sign on for a virtual reality streaming platform.

The changes mostly have to do with increased atomisation of society (something that our pandemic also seems like an accelerant for). With the ban on mass gatherings, there are no more legal concerts (I think it's fair to assume cinemas are closed down, too) and people tend to huddle in their own close-knit communities. There are glimpses of a paranoid, mistrustful world, where travelers passing through small towns are trailed by police and refused accomodation, while groups of like-minded people sharing their interests have to devise elaborate safeguards against crackdowns and infiltrations.

All this forms a background for a depiction of an art world gripped by major corporations – they control the technology that can bring the artist to the audience, and therefore they get to decide who to platform and how to present them. The choice is either to join in or toil in obscurity, barely scraping by.

Rosemary idealistically joins the streaming company in the hopes that she can help artists connect with an audience, but soon comes to see the darker, more predatory aspects of her employer's activities. Meanwhile, Luce struggles to find meaning and carry on doing what she loves most – performing live – in a world that became fundamentally unfriendly to it. Their paths criss-cross throughout the novel, illuminating various aspects of the situation, and posing difficult dilemmas: is it better to preserve more authenticity with a limited reach? or is it possible to divert some of the power of large media companies to serve your own ends without completely compromising your ideals?

In the end, though, I keep coming back to the pandemic. I remember starting to leave the house during and immediately after the initial lockdown, just for a short while to grab some sun and air. I remember watching people with wariness and suspicion when they didn't wear a face mask outside or when they stood closer than 2 m from me. I remember how those feelings relaxed with the relaxing of guidelines and increased understanding of the most risky situations for viral transmission. (It's important to bear in mind that this can all vary from country to country given the different handling of the pandemic, as well as from person to person). Reading about Rosemary's panic during underground gigs or her nervousness while riding on a public transport resonated with those memories. I know we are all waiting for a vaccine or some other development that will eliminate the risk completely, but sometimes I wonder what if the risk never entirely goes away? What level will be acceptable if it won't go down to zero? What if it always lurks, just like it potentially lurks in the novel? (since we never find out what happened with the epidemic).

And so A Song for a New Day became a very thought-provoking book for me. It asks at what point should we move past fear (I don't necessarily have an answer here and live music events are quite far down the list of things I'd be comfortable participating in atm). It also reminds us what waits on the other side of it – the joy of unmediated human contact and the potential for change that we can only tap into when we are together.

It's an important reminder.

Painfully prescient post-pandemic SF, revisiting and expanding the world of Pinsker's earlier short story Our Lady Of The Open Road. Which I read early on in lockdown and found quite difficult going even at that length, so if only I'd stopped to read the blurb, instead of just seeing 'Oooh, Sarah Pinsker has a novel out, I'll have me some of that!', I very much doubt I'd have requested this from Netgalley, thus obliging myself to read it sooner or later, rather than running away, as I might well have done otherwise. Initially, the book is divided between two timelines; one follows Luce, the star of the earlier story, playing the last big gig before gigs stop, then trying to find her way through the uncertain period afterwards, as what is initially assumed to be a temporary hiatus just keeps expanding into a grey and empty future without progress or prospect of change. And then there's Rosemary, a decade or so later, with only faint childhood memories of the Before, her education and dating all having happened virtually, working remotely for 'Superwally' because what other jobs are there?

SF isn't supposed to be about predicting the future, of course. But my 'phone is pretty much choked with screenshots of quotes from this book and the vast majority, looking back over them, are simply there because it's uncanny how well Pinsker predicted this. I think it's best I not use them after all, because if I started I wouldn't know where to stop, and it would make this review sprawl horribly; please just accept, 80% of what the past six months has felt like, how diminished the world has become, Pinsker called it. I didn't even realise at first that it was prediction, I thought it was just an impressively quick response, until I saw that in the US the book came out a year ago. Anyway, amongst all that, one of the negligible number of details which didn't accord with the 2020 we've seen, and the 2020s I already expected, is that the big corporation that dominates what's left, including close ties to the StageHoloLive online shows that have replaced still-banned gigs, is not a thinly-veiled Amazon but a barely-disguised Walmart. Not that the supermarkets have had a bad pandemic either, mind, but this felt like a slight stretch.
And then Walmart emerged as a lead bidder for the forced sale of TikTok's US operation, and I started hearing the Twilight Zone music.
(Some UK readers of a certain age may also have a secondary resonance for the name 'Superwally', which was already taken by the sequel to an early satire of what was yet to even be termed lad culture. Even as one of what I suspect to be a very small number of readers affected by this issue, it wasn't enough to significantly dent my reading experience)

The other detail which thus far seems unlikely is that in Rosemary's time, with congregation laws still defining any gathering of more than 30 people as illegal and unsanitary (30! Luxury.), the underground, illicit gig scene is drawing on an admirably diverse scene, the cool kids of all ages, orientations &c. Whereas in what we must regrettably and for all its lifelessness describe as 'real life', it's often precisely the mates formerly to be found in at least 15 bands who seem most likely to be taking all of this very seriously, and whom I least expect to see out and about again even if the initial threat does ever end. Because that's a big part of the story - less the initial terror, than the ingrained one which comes after months and then years of treating the outside world as the enemy, other people as primarily a contagion risk. There are brilliant scenes with Rosemary seeing a flask passed around for the first time, feeling people push up against her for the first time, how terrifying that is to someone raised in a modern plague age. But also how live music feels the first time – Pinsker is excellent at catching the feeling of a gig, an OK one and a great one, and fuck me that's a bittersweet reading experience when you don't know if or when you'll ever see one again, carefully corralled and seated approximations aside. Still, one of the things which raises the novel above its short precursor is the degree to which it acknowledges that, for someone who's never had the real thing, or even for those for whom fear outweighs the loss of connection, the virtual gigs are themselves a powerful experience. This more evenhanded approach confers a bittersweet power of its own, whereas for all that I almost physically miss gigs, Song For The Open Road could at times risk coming across a little Luddite and Campaign For Real Music. That position is still represented here, but it's more firmly a character viewpoint for Luce and those who think like her, less the feeling one takes away from the story as a whole, which is in large part a wrestle with the old, old dilemma between purity and outreach.

The resolution to that question, imperfect as it is...well, given the title I don't think it's a spoiler to say this ends on a note of defiant optimism, not a million miles from Pump Up The Volume. Which inevitably rang a little false to me, but I think that's less down to any failing in the novel than my own utter lack of hope right now. I've been noticing since my John Brunner kick about a decade back that the problem with dystopias is that they tend to be too optimistic, but that's doubly true here in 2020 – the location in the title of at least three dystopian 20th century fictions, none of which predicted anything quite this dire. So it is here, and not just the ending. This is a scared and dispirited America, where the politicians are cowed and perhaps a little corrupt, but they're not actively malign or deranged; they may be happy with people staying scared and separated, but they're not robbing the populace blind, or actively trying to poison them, and the electoral system seems to be intact and respected. The US police appear mainly as a bother and an obstacle, but they're not an occupying force, and arrest rather than brutalise or murder. There seems to be some form of basic income, and people in casual jobs consider a fear of hospitals when wondering whether to seek treatment, but don't seem to worry about the cost. At least some places are facing water shortages, but manageable ones, and the climate otherwise appears to be sane. If only, eh? Still, I suppose even if SF were prediction, and a writer had been gifted with a perfect vision of the now, let alone what's coming, most of them wouldn't want to depict it in perfect fidelity because who wants to read anything that depressing*? Even so, next time you see an article – or even, as of this week, a TV series – doing the 'whither pandemic fiction?' bit, remember that the answer is exactly the same as it was for 'whither climate change fiction?' – it's called science fiction, look it up.

*OK, Peter Watts would probably have written it exactly as is. But anyone else.

I was drawn to A Song For A New Day because I have really enjoyed Sarah Pinkser's short fiction and when I found out at the end that this was drawn from one of her short stories, it made more sense to me. Overall, it reminded me a lot of the work of Cory Doctorow: a realistic near future that feels creepily dystopian, an activist who refuses to compromise, threats of terrorism, and tech companies which insinuate themselves into every aspect of an individual's life until they take over. But where Doctorow's stories are propulsive thrillers, Pisnker's story is more intimate and driven by a love of live music.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel. It was pleasant to spend time with and I liked the two main characters, who were both difficult and human in their own way (although I suspect that Luce was not written to be difficult) and the people they shared their world with. I could feel shades of Becky Chambers in the general kindness and generosity of the characters.

My main takeaway from the novel was that I really wanted to go to a gig - a thing I haven't done in a good few years - which means it was a success. The main message of the book seemed to be that being physically close to other people, sharing experiences and space in the physical world, is a vital part of life and that it should be fought for. And in 2020, that felt particularly important.

I've been finding it really hard to know what to say about this novel. I enjoyed it, but didn't love it. There was too much music in it for me - I've never really been into live music, so a lot of the music scenes I just wanted to get on and move on with the story. The plot itself is interesting, and I liked the diversity of the characters/relationships between them. I did think that the world building could have been a bit better. It was all a bit vague. Some things were skimmed over, like how exactly Hood space works and stuff like that. I think it would have been a better novel if the background was a bit stronger.

Thanks to netgalley I received an ARC of this book. I was so excited to read it. Unfortunately I found it a little bland, I couldn't relate to the characters and I just felt that it was lacking something to really grip me.

A great read, plenty of pace and an interesting take on a post pandemic society (watch this space, I guess). What really stands out is the pure joy of music drenching the pages - Pinsker brilliantly portrays gigs and music in a way that makes you feel like you can almost hear the beats. It feels like a love story to music as much as a novel of words.

So this novel, published at the end of last year, is about a future in which there’s no live music, partly because of a pandemic? Ooof. I like a good dystopia anyway, but the focus on and evident love for music here along with the anti-corporate message speak straight to my punk rock heart. It's an engaging and highly readable novel. Maybe it's a little naively idealistic, but hey, so is rock n roll. If you ever believed that three chords and the truth can change the world, then this is for you.

Reading during the time of Covid sometimes makes relevant the most tangential of connections, allegories or analogies to other scenarios sometime seems remarkably prescient. A Song For A New Day might be a little too on the nose even for that set in a world where there was a large terrorist threat followed by a pandemic, congregating is banned. And so live music is dead, except in a weird virtual space. Or is it?

A Song For A New Day's flaws are only really apparent now we are in a similar global event, and the last thing anyone in the USA seems to want to do is ban events if there is the vaguest possibility that it might happen. But you could imagine a more responsible government that might, which - when combined with a slight step forward in VR technology and slightly more monopolistic big companies - the scenario can arise. It doesn't really matter, the book is actually much more of an alegory about ClearChannel and Ticketmaster than anything else, in a world where The Man controls all the music, is everything sanitised to fit their algorithms? And so as I barrelled into the parallel stories of the accidental music fan discovering the power of holographic live music (and actual live music), and the musician who can no long play to anyone, it took me ages to realise that - hold on - is this a rockist treatise? Is it saying that only live music matters? Do you need to cut your chops on stage, and is the involvement of corporate culture an instant disqualification?

It certainly flirts with that idea, but breaks down near the end for its own good. Many bands have asked how do you work within the system to subvert the system, and this equally struggles with a way of doing it, Its a little unfortunate too that we do have the pandemic to compare it with, as certain unanswered questions (such as who were the terrorists, is the disease still out there, what do they do in other countries) are left resolutely unanswered. The world building is just there as set-up, but obviously I wanted more. But that's the nature of the book - both leads are wonderfully flawed - the musician Luce is almost Mark E,Smithian in her desire to keep her music pure, chopping and changing band names, not playing old favourites. The naif, Rosemary, on the other hand is a very young product of a society where she has only ever really interacted with people online, actually scared of physical contact, of being offline, throwing herself into a scene of secret underground gigs. What will make you ache however - and this comes from someone who doesn't go to gigs much these days - is the rapture of a great gig both for the audience and the performer. Pinsker capture something that is really very, very hard to do, to explain the why of performance, not just music. That a gig is an experience conjured between the band and the audience, both equally important. Basically when I finished it, I stomped my feet and demanded an encore.

[NetGallery ARC]

I really enjoyed this book and will give it a huge thumbs up. With a great story line and excellent main characters - I would highly recommend this book.