Veronika Jordan's Blog, page 38

Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

For years, rumors of the ‘Marsh Girl’ haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society.

So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life’s lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.

My Review

It’s taken me a while to get round to reading this book – I say read, but I actually borrowed the audiobook from our local library. It was beautifully narrated and I think I probably preferred listening to it rather than reading it on my Kindle.

It’s been reviewed so many times that I’m not going to go into great detail. Suffice to say that it’s the story of a young girl called Kya, known as the ‘Marsh Girl’, who is left by her family to survive on her own in the swamps around the quiet fishing village of Barkley Cove. We first meet her when she is just six years old.

Her mother walked out one day, followed by her older brother and sisters, leaving her with brother Jodie and their drunken, violent father. Eventually he too leaves and she must now fend for herself.

She never goes to school, can’t read or write and must do what she can to survive. She is more in tune with nature than she is with people, though she does have a few ‘friends’ in the village.

This is a beautifully written tale – it made me cry more than once – Kya being sensitively portrayed by the author. It’s a book about love, loss, survival, and at the same time it’s a murder mystery and a coming-of-age story. It’s also a ‘celebration of nature’ (The New York Times Book Review). I adored it.

About the Author

Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa—Cry of the Kalahari, The Eye of the Elephant, and Secrets of the Savanna. She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and International Wildlife, among many others. She currently lives in Idaho, where she continues her support for the people and wildlife of Zambia. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.

Last Chance In Paris by Lynda Marron Extract

When her husband suggests a romantic break, Claire feels obliged to say yes but immediately regrets it.

After the tragedy they’ve been through, how can one weekend in Paris save their marriage?

#LastChanceInParis #LyndaMarron @eriu_books @Tr4cyF3nt0n #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour
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Claire and Ronan aren’t the only people on a make-or-break visit to the City of Love. There is a big-shot movie producer from Hollywood, full of regret for a life ill-lived; a student from Boston, torn between love and duty; a Ukrainian refugee struggling to protect her little sister; and an old woman from Dijon, hoping to be braver than she has ever had to be before.

When their lives briefly intertwine, something extraordinary happens…

Extract

“Harrison D. Carter, known to those few who loved him as Harry, leaned back in his director’s chair and sighed.

‘Cut,’ he muttered under his breath, barely audibly, but the word was picked up by his mic and by the lackey at his side, whose job it was to attend to Harry’s every whim, even to the point of doing his yelling for him.

‘CUT,’ the lackey yelled and turned to his boss, ready for the next command.

Harry closed his eyes momentarily, as if considering a life-or-death choice: to cut the wire on the ticking time bomb or turn and run for the hills.

‘THAT’S A WRAP,’ he announced loudly, enjoying the resonance of his own voice. He stood at once and strode, back straight and head high, off the set.

Back in his makeshift office, Harry set about mixing himself a drink in the blender – the concoction of wheatgrass, green tea and eye of newt that his dietician had prescribed. While he was searching for a glass, the door opened, and Jennifer Fairchild, his PA, stepped in.

‘You must be over the moon,’ she said. Jenny’s tone, as usual, was preternaturally upbeat.

Before Harry could even begin to formulate an honest answer, Jenny had ducked to open a low cupboard and emerged with a highball glass. She held it out towards him so that he could pour his drink into it. His hand, as he lifted the weight of the full jug, began to tremble.

‘Here,’ said Jenny, ‘let me do it.’ She took the jug, poured the drink and handed the glass back to him.

‘Thanks, Jen.’ He took the glass. ‘Want some?’

‘Blended Kermit?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘No, thanks. Do you want me to fix you a real drink?’

Jenny was a trouper. With the sort of money she had behind her, she needn’t have worked a day in her life, but she seemed to get a kick out of helping people. It was like her gift or something.

‘Ya know something, Jennifer?’

‘What’s that, Harry?’

‘You’ve been doing things to make my life better since the first moment we met.’

‘That’s okay.’ She dismissed his compliment with a smile.

‘You pay me for it, you know.’

Harry had been on location in Mexico. He’d decided to skip home early to surprise Rita, his second wife, on what was the first anniversary of their wedding. He took the offer of a lift back to L.A. in his leading man’s Gulfstream IV. His house, when he got there, was deserted, but he made an educated guess as to where he was likely to find Rita. There was a jazz club in The Glen Centre where the piano player knew her name.

When Harry walked into Vibrato’s bar, Rita was sitting on that same pianist’s lap, his fingers playing arpeggios up her thigh and disappearing beneath the twinkling hem of her sequined bottle-green dress. Harry watched, disappointingly unsurprised, as Rita stretched out her foot in obvious excitement and dangled.”

Many thanks to @Tr4cyF3nt0n for inviting me to be part of the #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour 

About the Author

Lynda Marron was born in Dublin and spent her early childhood in a small town called Prosperous in Co. Kildare. At the age of nine she moved to Cork. She has not yet mastered the language. In her teens, she learned that reading curbed her anxiety, and that writing swept it clean away. Thus began her addiction to ink.

Lynda graduated from University College Cork in the mid-nineties with two degrees in microbiology, neither of which brought her any closer to her dream of writing a novel. She opted for the longer route, the Life Experience Creative Writing Course, which included teaching English to Italian teenagers, filing letters in a GP’s surgery, writing listicles for an online bookseller, and a twenty-five year module called Read All the Books.

She has made and raised four lovely humans, each of whom she taught to read. When she isn’t busy writing her second novel, you’ll find her reading, not weeding, in her rewilded garden. Her greatest ambition is to one day plant a forest, or even just an oak.

Last Chance in Paris is her debut novel.

Mr Magenta by Christopher Bowden

Stephen Marling thought he knew his aunt Flora.

But when he inherits her house in a quiet south London square a series of discoveries among her papers brings to light another person entirely.

Who, for example, is ‘Mr Magenta’ and what part did he play in her life?

In the process of uncovering the secrets of one life, Stephen is forced to re-evaluate his own and decide what he really wants.

#MrMagenta #ChristopherBowden #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour

Was he right to turn his back on Nancy Steiner, the young actress he met in New York, when he came home to take up his inheritance?

Interweaving past and present, the story takes him from a Brooklyn bookshop to a theatre in Marseille to a cottage on the east coast of England where the truth about Mr Magenta is finally revealed.

My Review

This is a very gentle read. Don’t expect murder, violence or crime. There is some suspense and intrigue though, as Stephen begins to unravel Aunt Flora’s secret life. Who was Mr Magenta, and why did she keep photos and documents hidden away in the back of a davenport (an ornamental writing desk with drawers and a sloping surface for writing)? Yes, I had to look it up.

And what about the photos of four men with their heads cut off – only in the photos, not in real life. Or are they all the same man? Did Flora have a secret lover (or four) after her husband Clive died in the nineties?

Our hero Stephen was working in New York as a lawyer, but came home to the UK to take up residence in Aunt Flora’s house, which she left to him in her will, along with a sizeable amount of money. Unfortunately, this meant leaving girlfriend Nancy behind in the US. Nancy is an actress, always looking for her big break. But even though she has everything needed to make her rich and famous, she tells Stephen there are dozens like her in New York, all chasing the same jobs.

As Stephen uncovers more information about his aunt, he meets lots of people who knew her, and travels up to Norfolk to discover the connection with a place called Sanderling that keeps cropping up amongst her papers and theatre programmes.

And apart from the mysterious Mr Magenta, who is Anton Brook? Or James Drove? Or Alain Vide?

I absolutely loved it. Such a change from my usual diet of crime fiction, gothic horror, psychological thrillers and Scandi noir.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Christopher Bowden lives in south London. He is the author of six novels, each with a colour theme. The Amber Maze, published in September 2018, is the latest. His previous books have been praised variously by Andrew Marr, Julian Fellowes, Sir Derek Jacobi, and Shena Mackay. Of his third novel, The Red House, Sir Derek said, “Very entertaining, cleverly constructed and expertly paced. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Website:
http://www.christopherbowden.com

Mongrel by Hanako Footman

Mei loses her Japanese mother at age six. Growing up in suburban Surrey, she yearns to fit in, suppressing not only her heritage, but her growing desire for her best friend Fran.

Yuki leaves the Japanese countryside to pursue her dream of becoming a concert violinist in London. Far from home and in an unfamiliar city, she finds herself caught up in the charms of her older teacher.

#Mongrel @FootmanHanako @wearefootnote  @bonnierbooks_uk #HanakoFootman
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Haruka attempts to navigate Tokyo’s nightlife and all of its many vices, working as a hostess in the city’s sex district. She grieves a mother who hid so many secrets from her, until finally one of those secrets comes to light . . .

Shifting between three intertwining narratives, Mongrel reveals a tangled web of desire, isolation, belonging and ultimately, hope.

My Review

Mongrel is poetic in its literary style, lyrical and flowing. It’s so beautifully and sensitively written – it’s hard to believe it’s a debut novel.

I ‘enjoyed’ (totally the wrong word) Haruko’s story the most. I found her easier to empathise with. Yuki’s is so painful, at times I had to stop reading. And Mei is too far out of my comfort zone, though later on in the book it was easier.

The book starts with Yuki and Mei, and for a while we move back and forth between the two. They are not yet connected. Yuki has left Japan at age eighteen, to travel to England where she will ‘pursue her dream of becoming a concert violinist’. Her talent is amazing and soon attracts the attention of her much older tutor. No-one seems to care though, which I found quite strange. He probably should have been sacked.

Mei lost her mum who died when she was six and she lives with her father in Surrey. She has a beautiful voice and wants to be a singer. However, we hear more about her relationship with her best friend Fran than her potential career, though we never really discover whether it’s reciprocated in the way she would like. There’s a lot of drinking, drug taking, partying and holidays with Fran’s family. As I said, I was totally out of my comfort zone.

It’s quite some time before we ‘meet’ Hukara. She too lost her mum when she was sixteen, and lives with her Baba and Jiji (grandparents) in a somewhat ramshackle farm where Jiji tends the rice fields. Until she died, Hakura’s mum worked all hours and was rarely at home. Then one day, Hakura has a terrible fight with Jiji and runs away to Tokyo where she works in the sex industry. She tries to justify her choices, but we can see it makes her sad.

During the second half of the book the strands begin to come together and we start to see how everyone is connected. There are tiny hints throughout the book, but it is complicated. Better to just go with the flow. There is so much emotion, sadness, secrets and regret, and the whole story becomes more and more gripping. But it’s Yuki that pains me the most. She is a character that will live with me for a long time.

I must also say at this point that we learn a lot about Japan, the culture, the food, the language and the people. It’s a fascinating insight as well as a riveting storyline.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Hanako Footman is a British-Japanese actor and author living in London. Mongrel is her debut novel.

Rescue Quest by MC Reeves Publication Day Party

Rescue Quest is out today! Grab your pickaxe and get ready to dive into the world of Minecraft like you’ve never seen it before.

Join Tom, a timid boy who is bullied and the smallest boy in school, as he embarks on a daring quest to rescue his little sister Alice from the clutches of the game itself.

To succeed, he’ll need to find the courage he never knew he had and form friendships and alliances with a steely warrior and a mystical potions master. Together, they’ll face unknown dangers and battle against a terrifying urban legend who has kidnapped Alice for his own sinister plans.

Through loyalty, sacrifice, and overcoming the bullies, can Tom find his inner hero in this epic battle between good and evil?

Rescue Quest is the first book in a new action-packed adventure series, perfect for readers aged 8-12 who love playing Minecraft and losing themselves in thrilling fantasy worlds. 

Available as paperback and ebook from Amazon and as ebook from Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and most other online book stores.

Buy link
www.amazon.co.uk

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The Phantom Child by AJ Wills

Is her child really missing? Or did he never exist at all?

With cracks beginning to show in her marriage, Karina thinks a short break to a luxury villa in Turkey with her husband, Ronan, and their four-year-old son, Jacob, is just what the family needs. It’ll be a chance to relax, enjoy some good food, and more importantly to reconnect with the people she loves the most.

But on their first morning, Karina is startled to discover she’s slept in late and not been woken by Jacob. He’s an early riser who always comes into their bed pestering them to make him breakfast.

#ThePhantomChild #AJWills
X(Twitter) @adrianwills  @ZooloosBT #ZooloosBookTours #blogtour
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So where is he? A needle of fear spikes through Karina’s veins.

She rushes to his room, but his bed is empty and he’s nowhere to be found in the villa.
But when she wakes Ronan, frantic with worry, and tells him their son is missing, he
stares at her blankly.

He says he has no idea what she’s talking about and that they don’t have any children.
He’s certainly never heard of a boy called Jacob…

My Review

This was a quick read and a real page-turner with two major twists that – as they say – you won’t see coming. Well I didn’t anyway, especially the second one.

The story is told from Karina’s point of view, and it’s quite distressing at times. On holiday in Turkey with second husband Ronan and four-year-old Jacob, she wakes up on the first morning to discover that the boy is missing. Vanished, his clothes and toys gone, and his bed not slept in. But that’s only the beginning, because Ronan insists that they don’t have a son, and that Karina is delusional, with a history of mental illness.

Karina is a bit dim really isn’t she? So much investigation she could have done at the time or at least later. Even just finding out more about Ronan when he started gaslighting her. Looking him up on the internet would have told her a lot, especially when she starts to find his behaviour menacing. And she’s not always very nice is she? So judgemental about other parents. Criticising everything they do, saying she’d never do that. Sorry, but sometimes you just do to save your sanity.

That’s not to say I didn’t feel sympathy for her, of course I did, but she accepted it all rather too easily. She doesn’t seem to have any friends who would have seen her with Jacob who can confirm that he exists. Her mother has dementia and barely knows her, let alone Jacob, and her ex-husband is not exactly supportive, say no more.

Now I love an unreliable narrator, but this would really take it to the extreme if she doesn’t have a child at all. But does she? Well we won’t find out for a quite a long time. It’s an intricate plot, with some truly horrible characters and Karina is stuck in the middle.

The book is set in two timelines – we jump ahead ten years in part two – when Karina’s life starts to change. And it’s here that it moves at a cracking pace as secrets and lies are revealed.

Many thanks to @ZooloosBT for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the Author

AJ Wills writes standalone psychological thrillers with twisty plots. He’s a former journalist who wrote in his spare time, before and after work for ten years, until he was finally able to fulfil his lifelong dream of becoming a fulltime author in May 2021.

He’s never looked back and now runs a small independent publishing company, Cherry Tree Publishing with his wife, AJ McDine, also a thriller writer. He said: “I’ve always loved thrillers, but psychological thrillers hold a special interest for me because they’re about the scary, insane, disturbing things that happen to ordinary people – and we can all relate to them on some level.”

He lives in Kent in the south east of England.

AJ’s Links
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAJWills
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ajwills_author/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/adrianwills

Book Links
GoodReads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202336685-the-phantom-child
Buy Links – https://mybook.to/phantomchild-zbt

Twenty Seven Minutes by Ashley Tate

Phoebe Dean was the most popular girl alive and dead.

For the last ten years, the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer has been struggling to understand one thing: Why did it take young Grant Dean twenty-seven minutes to call for help on the fateful night of the car accident that took the life of his beloved sister, Phoebe?

Someone knows what really happened the night Phoebe died. Someone who is ready to tell the truth.

With Phoebe’s memorial in just three days, grief, delusion, ambition, and regret tornado together with biting gossip in a town full of people obsessed with a long-gone tragedy with four people at its heart—the caretaker, the secret girlfriend, the missing bad boy, and a former football star. Just kids back then, are forever tied together the fateful rainy night Phoebe died.

Perfect for fans of Jane Harper and Celeste Ng, Tate’s literary suspense Twenty-Seven Minutes is a gripping debut about what happens when grief becomes unbearable and dark secrets are unearthed in a hometown that is all too giddy to eat it up.

My Review

If you asked me when this was set I’d say the 1980s, but they have mobile phones. They don’t even seem to use DNA. It’s set in a small town in America and I often struggled with the setting. I think it’s because I have no experience of such a claustrophobic place. The characters are all vile. I’m sorry, but they are. They all lie to each other all the time.

The premise of the book is a car accident in which popular teenager Phoebe Dean died. Her brother Grant was driving – was he drunk? – and we also discover that ‘Crazy Becca’ was in the car with them. Grant and Becca were both badly injured. Becca doesn’t remember any of it, which appears to be a good thing as far as Grant is concerned. They hit a deer in the pouring rain, end of. Ten years on and Becca only seems to have one emotion – jealousy and the endless ‘what about me, look how I suffered.’ I know you did, but Phoebe died. Maybe, from time to time. be thankful that you survived. And stop obsessing about Grant, because he doesn’t care about you, except where it impacts him.

Grant was a promising football star, hoping for a college scholarship, but his injuries stopped that from happening. He’s been left behind in the backend town of West Wilmer. Phoebe was forever nagging him to do better at school, but her attitude to his girlfriends (and there were plenty) was all a bit Flowers in the Attic for me. They were supposed to be running away together, but Becca believes that it was her and Grant, not Phoebe.

I didn’t like the way that, even though the book is set in two timelines – now and ten years ago – we flip into the past in the middle of the ‘now’ chapters (in italics), which I found very irritating.

June is a throwback to the 1950s, including her name, which initially made me think she was much older. No-one in the UK is called June unless they are at least 60. Her older brother Wyatt disappeared on the night of the accident and has never been seen or heard from again. Their father left and June is alone with her mother, who dies at the very beginning of the book.

I felt sorry for June, who just wants the truth. Grant is a horrible human being and Becca is deluded. So I did care what happened? It was so drawn out that if I hadn’t been reading with my book club I think I’d have just jumped to the end or given up. Sorry, because it’s so well written, but it’s just too overlong for me.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read. 

About the Author

Ashley Tate is a Canadian author. Twenty Seven Minutes is her first novel.

Edge of Hope Photography Book by Anthony Dawton and Jim McFarlane

The Rohingya Refugee Camp at Cox’s Bazar by Anthony Dawton and Jim McFarlane

Published: 1st February 2024
Hardback ISBN: 9781843682509
Price: £35

Following the Rohingya genocide in 2017, Rohingya Muslims have sought refuge in Kutupalong in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Kutupalong is now the largest refugee camp in the world and is inhabited by around 900,000 refugees, 65% of which are children.

It’s difficult to gain access to this camp, but Jim McFarlane and Anthony Dawton managed to do so and in Edge of Hope, they share their photographs. All in black and white and printed to the highest quality, the images bear silent witness to the plight of the Rohingya people. Harrowing and thought provoking, Dawton and McFarlane’s images shine a light on the huge body of individuals living as refugees, who no longer occupy the front pages of newspapers, but are still without a home.

Dawton and McFarlane are not subject to the time restraints that photojournalists are so they have time to get to know the individuals they photograph and build relationships with their subjects. As a result, the photographs show the humanity and dignity of the individuals, despite the tragic circumstances. Although the photographs document desolation, despair and destruction, they also document unity, love and hope.

The Amal Foundation in Bangladesh continues to work in the Cox’s Bazar and Edge of Hope is published to raise funds and awareness for this important foundation.

The Working Relationship

Behind Edge of Hope is a photography partnership. Unusually, Jim McFarlane and Anthony Dawton photograph together and have done so for years. Jim lives in Australia and Anthony lives in London, but despite the distance between them, they have maintained a close friendship and working relationship. They are both indispensable to the process and have extraordinary stories about how they work together to get the photograph they desire.

They have taken photographs in Gaza, Camp Zaatari in Jordan and in the Palestinian camps in Beirut.

They are both available for interview and can discuss the virtues of a photography partnership.

The photos in this post are all taken from the book. Aren’t they fantastic?

My Thoughts

They say that ‘the eyes are the window to the soul’. Each of these pictures is therefore looking into the souls of the Rohingya people. And they are looking right back. In spite of all the trauma and devastation they have experienced, so many of them are smiling for the camera, their faces full of hope.

I reviewed Anthony Dawton’s photography book NOTLondon in September 2021 featuring homeless people on the streets of the capital here: https://cookiebiscuit.co.uk/2021/09/13/notlondon-anthony-dawton/

This was in the introduction (not my words) “Anthony Dawton photographs his subjects with a beauty and dignity that many of them are often denied. His portraits capture the strength and power of humanity as well as its vulnerability,” and I think this sums up Edge of Hope as well. These people are allowed their dignity and their beauty, and their strength shines through in the photographs.

Anthony and Jim are a rare talent that are able to do this, to capture these amazing images.

Many thanks to Grace Pilkington Publicity @GracePublicity for inviting me to give an unbiased review of Edge of Hope.

Anthony Dawton is an award winning commercial photographer based in London. He also works extensively with NGOs across the world including: Niger, Kashmir (following the earthquake), Gaza, Camp Zaatari (the Syrian refugee camp), the Beqaa Valley, the Palestinian camps in Beirut. He recently photographed the homeless on the streets of London and his book NOTLondon was published by Pallas Athene in 2021.

Jim McFarlane is an Australian based photographer who has worked commercially for over 35 years. His expertise covers advertising and a wide range of subjects including food, dance and people. McFarlane taught photography at Victorian College of the Arts and Deakin University.

His work with Anthony Dawton led him to Gaza, Camp Zaatari and the Palestinian Camps in Beirut.

Atom Inc by OC Heaton Cover Reveal

No one is above the Laws…

Seven years after its conception, LEAP is finally about to spell the end of global warming. For Uma and Ethan, this means personal and professional triumph – but quantum teleportation is an unwieldy beast, held back by those fighting to dominate the new world order.

Genre: Sci-fi |  Thriller | Crime | Mystery 

As LEAP’s roll out slows to a trickle, a greater threat emerges when a stealth attack on US troops leaves thousands dead. With the finger of suspicion pointing to a LEAP copycat, Ethan and Uma are forced to condone a breach of the Laws to reverse the massacre.

As LEAP’s new rival continues to show their hand, Ethan is dragged back into a nightmare he thought he had escaped. One that may finally claim his sanity, and that pushes Uma to the limits of hers, to defeat an evil that no longer plays by the rules.

Pre-order Link
www.amazon.co.uk

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The Descent by Paul E Hardisty

Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation in search for a refuge in the Southern Ocean.

Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the world on its course to disaster were the stories his step-father, now long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, The Forcing.

#TheDescent @Hardisty_Paul @OrendaBooks #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour

But there are huge gaps in the story that his mother, still alive but old and frail, steadfastly refuses to speak of, even thirty years later. When he discovers evidence that his mother has tried to cover up the truth, he knows that it is time to find out for himself.

Determined to learn what really happened during his mother’s escape from the concentration camp to which she and Kweku’s father were banished, and their subsequent journey halfway around the world, Kweku and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet. What they find will challenge not only their faith in humanity, but their ability to stay alive.

My Review

If I thought The Forcing was hard to review in January 3023, then this one is nigh impossible, but I’ll give it my best shot.

The Descent alternates between two timelines – the first one being now ie 2024 which we see from the point of view of a young assistant (we don’t know her name) to the ‘Boss’ (we don’t know his name either initially). If you’ve read The Forcing you might have an inkling. She is around 20 years old and is one of his favourites. She earns a fortune for someone of her age, but what she has to do for the money is not exactly part of the official job description. This part is the ‘prequel’ to The Forcing.

We then jump to the ‘sequel’ ie the 2060s, after The Forcing, and it’s here that we meet Kweku Ashworth, his wife Julie, their young son Leo and the rest of their family. A tragedy means that they have to travel all over the world, first seeking Kweku’s relatives in Africa, to try to find answers to the gaps in his mother’s story. Then they must search for a missing child, but they have no idea where she might be.

The whole world has been devastated by climate change, an African war, nuclear bombings and mass inoculation resulting in sterility and death. This all occurred in the late 2020s, when a group of very rich men including the Boss decided to ignore the climate crisis and make money out of others’ misfortunes. These facts are revealed gradually as Kweku, Julie and Leo travel to Africa, Madagascar, Panama, Grenada and finally to Bora Bora, amongst other places.

When I read The Forcing, I said I thought that ‘villain’ Derek Argent reminded me of Trump but in The Descent we have a president called Bragg and he really is a Trump-alike – bragger by name and by nature. In fact though, he is more a puppet of the rich, who know that keeping him in power will work to their benefit. And his of course.

While I understand that we are not doing enough to prevent a climate catastrophe, I hope that there aren’t people around like the Boss and his mates, ready to let the earth burn while they get richer. However, “The Forcing was certainly a very bleak read, seemingly devoid of hope”, but by the end of The Descent, I could see a glimmer of a future amongst the death and devastation. I hope we never let it get to that point.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Canadian Paul Hardisty has spent twenty-five years working all over the world as an environmental scientist and freelance journalist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a in 1993, and was one of the last Westerners out of Yemen at the outbreak of the 1994 civil war. In 2022 he criss-crossed Ukraine reporting on the Russian invasion. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The four novels in his Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution, all received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and a Telegraph Book of the Year. Paul drew on his own experiences to write Turbulent Wake, an extraordinary departure from his high-octane, thought-provoking thrillers. Paul is a keen outdoorsman, a conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.

Orenda Books is a small independent publishing company specialising in literary fiction with a heavy emphasis on crime/thrillers, and approximately half the list in translation. They’ve been twice shortlisted for the Nick Robinson Best Newcomer Award at the IPG awards, and publisher and owner Karen Sullivan was a Bookseller Rising Star in 2016. In 2018, they were awarded a prestigious Creative Europe grant for their translated books programme. Three authors, including Agnes Ravatn, Matt Wesolowski and Amanda Jennings have been WHSmith Fresh Talent picks, and Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, won an English PEN Translation Award, and adapted for BBC Radio Four ’s Book at Bedtime. Six titles have been short- or long-listed for the CWA Daggers. Launched in 2014 with a mission to bring more international literature to the UK market, Orenda Books publishes a host of debuts, many of which have gone on to sell millions worldwide, and looks for fresh, exciting new voices that push the genre in new directions. Bestselling authors include Ragnar Jonasson, Antti Tuomainen, Gunnar Staalesen, Michael J. Malone, Kjell Ola Dahl, Louise Beech, Johana Gustawsson, Lilja Sigurðardóttir and Sarah Stovell.