A review by tregina
Pastworld by Ian Beck

3.0

It's the central concept and setting that really get the stars here. The characters tend to be lacking in personality and the plot is basically by-the-numbers, but the whole setting raises ethical questions that the narrative doesn't ignore. London is turned into a theme park depicting the Victorian era with such accuracy that murder is a known risk of entry, but in many ways its less a theme park than a zoo, where visitors come to gawk mostly at the living beings within, only in this zoo the visitors are inside the cages. The city now exists so much separate from the rest of the world that even its laws are dialed back to Victorian England. The past isn't sanitized for safe viewing, but it also isn't entirely authentic with visitors and residents alike knowing perfectly well what it is. But the visitors come to see the gory spectacles, to see the violence and poverty, and aren't really fussed whether they're real or staged. What does that say about us? About the world? These are the areas I would have liked to delve deeper into, but I'm glad they were there at all.