In a flooded city, the arcology provides a high-tech haven – for those who can afford it. Here, safe in her pampered confinement, Eva longs for escape.

But each day she is made to play The Game, a curious virtual environment that seems more designed to monitor and test than to entertain. For those outside, life is a struggle for survival, battling climate change and a society on the brink of collapse, where unregulated technology runs amok, spawning genetic monsters, robotic nightmares and digital ghosts.

Here, Squirrel is a memory thief, eking out a fraught existence in service to the criminal gangs that trade in illicit gene hacks, blackmarket augments and – her speciality – stolen secrets. But Squirrel has strange skills she doesn’t know she possesses, and when they uncover a secret that some very bad people would do anything to keep hidden, her only chance at escape leads to the arcology itself, to Eva, and the answers no one wants them to learn.

Tidelands is an ongoing sci-fi and fantasy serial. Set some years in the future, it is a dystopian blend of cyberpunk, first contact, litRPG and Lovecraftian horror.

Part 1: Ghosts & Monsters collects together instalments 1–17. .