Farthing is well-written and quite involving, but, ultimately, ends the way all too many stories end—with those in power retaining, or even multiplying, their power.

In a library where books were shelved by their relationships to other books, Farthing would find itself nearby Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Orwell’s 1984, and Banks’s Against a Dark Background—everything changed, everything is still the same, and some characters maybe aren’t so lucky as to have escaped with their lives.