The book's four stories take place on the eponymous public-private-partnership island in 2023, where a fifth-term Governments legacy project is going very well or very poorly, depending on who you ask. No more perfect conceit for a dystopian near-future novel has existed in New Zealand, says Murdoch Stephens, editor at Lawrence & Gibson. Milk Island is a work of conceptual genius combining dropping our she'll-be-right haplessness onto a centre-right empire bigger than even Piggy Muldoon could have imagined. With the 2023 NZ election approaching on Milk Island, the novel's four main characters are interwoven into the same sprawling web of prisons, politics, tourism and media. On the former South Island, patriotism and prosperity trumps all else and life matters very little unless you're Milky Moo, the nation's favourite genetically-enhanced cow.