I've liked M.R. (Mike) Carey for quite some time, his run on Lucifer was one of those long running under-the-radar series which was one of those great chewy runs of 75 books that nailed a character in a single voice (without which the current TV series wouldn't exist, not that they resemble each other much). I like Carey's pulp instincts whilst knowing he is very good at a slightly more thoughtful mode of storytelling. The Girl With All the Gifts was a breakthrough which has allowed him to plough various genre furrows in the UK, and whilst I've not always loved it, its always been exceptionally readable. The Book Of Koli is the start of a trilogy of post post apocalyptic British fantasy, whilst not a genre I like much, I was willing to give a go. And whilst it had more than a few moments of me thinking it was too cute by half, he has again crafted a lead you care about enough to follow its narrative no matter what genre cliches are ticked off.

And the cliches are here in abundance. Towns and villages have shifted their names, memory of the times before the crisis are shakey and there is a technology as magic metaphor (though not one where anyone thinks of technology AS magic, just something they can't understand). The nature of the apocalypse is rather fun, namely genetically engineering trees to get energy from more than sunlight, and breeding mobility into them to help clean up the planet, they then got murderous. But the setting notwithstanding, The Book Of Koli stands and falls on its protagonist, Koli, who happily explains his world, and his place in it as a slightly horny, idiot teenager who steals a bit of tech which gets him ostracised. This inhabits a YA zone, though I think it happily skews outside that readership (there is a trial but our hero fails). Carey has picked a very avuncular voice for Koli, and also for his tech (basically a futuristic personality themed iPod). In both instances the voices he chooses are on the edge of of breaking the narrative flow (and the concept of a Harijuku Girl personality for the iPod AI is also on thin ice) but gets by because it is so much fun.

The Book Of Koli ends knowing the next book will be along, it end in a lull rather than a cliffhanger. I am not all that interested in where the book is going (though I can't imagine in not going to London in the end), but I do want to spend more time with the central double act. A boy and his semi-sentient personal media player in a battle against inbreeding and killer trees is not quite where I expected it to go, but I do trust Carey, and so far, this was a pretty fun start.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as I expected to - mainly because I found Koli himself difficult to like sometimes. Love the concept and the killer trees though!

I was sent a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.

When I first started to read this book straight after another one, the style of writing was so different that I wasn't sure about it initially. I'm glad I persevered! Loved the story of a very different world than the one we are in currently. I totally recommend this book for an interesting read. I was disappointed there wasn't more!

#TheBookOfKoli #Netgalley

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me. The blurb really drew me in but, the writing was just too slow for me.

I been to Half-Ax, I been to Hudd’s Field

With The Book of Koli M R Carey has written another entertaining and inventive post-apocalyptic thriller. This is the first volume of three and I found myself very keen to move straight to the second, The Trials of Koli.

Set in the distant future, society has collapsed and a despoiled nature has taken over. A few scattered villages retain primitive vestiges of civilisation defending themselves with some surviving pieces of ancient Tech against ‘shunned men’, left over smart weapons from The Unfinished War and feral trees. It’s a scary place, this Ingland, this Yewkay. Koli, as an inquisitive young man, discovers that the government of his village is not telling him the whole truth about the Tech they possess and consequently finds himself exiled into a cruel and brutal outside world.

The Lord of the Rings parallels are there to be spotted and appear to be quite deliberate - at one point Koli and his village are compared to Hobbits and the Shire of Middle Earth; the wandering healer, Ursala with her armoury of Tech and her superior knowledge of past times appears a Gandalf type figure. If this is so, then precisely who or what is Monomo Aware, the AI in an entertainment box who befriends Koli and finds her own self-awareness after an enormous and unintended upgrade? As Ursala asks, ‘You are not an AI. What are you?’

With rogue drones, messianic cannibals and man-eating forests, this is an exciting story in a carefully constructed future world, and the opening volume holds out much promise for the next two books.

I'm sad to say that I didn't enjoy this book as much as I had expected to.
The book felt really slow to start and I had a hard time connecting with the main character, and felt a general lack of depth and personality.
The other thing I couldn't get past was the writing style. While I do understand the reason behind the language style used, I found it really hard to focus on the plot and was constantly rereading parts in order to translate it into standard English in my head, which was a slow and frustrating process.
I'm sure this writing style would appeal to some, but for me it just didn't work.

It took me a while to get into this book and for a while I thought the writing style was going to be the end for me, as the constant slang and disjointed syntax and speech patterns were doing my tree in. I'm glad I persevered though, as it didn't take too long before the language seemed to flow more naturally through my brain and it wasn't as distracting. The novel is a slow build up, with the first half being dedicated almost solely to setting the scene and building up the world and the characters. And it's a beautifully built up world; there's this strange juxtaposition of a harsh and dangerous lifestyle, where the trees and all the wildlife are quite literally out to get you and the only thing saving the village from ruin is a handful of old tech from the days before the world went to hell.

Told from the first person perspective of Koli, it is clear he is telling his story from some point in the future - a device that was beautifully realised in The Name of the Wind, but is utilised far more simply here. Koli himself is perhaps one of the least interesting aspects of this novel, as he is a very typical YA protagonist; headstrong, thoughtless and determined to be something special in order to attract the attention of a girl he's crushing on and become a Rampart, one of the 'ruling classes' that can command the tech. That to my mind was far less interesting than a world in which the trees are quite literally out to get you, able to move and hunt humans and animals at will. Murder trees, if you like. I did like the way the narrative being set from the future allowed the adult Koli to highlight his younger self's immaturity and self-centred behaviour though.

The book does pick up pace in the second half, and whilst I quite enjoyed the first half it really does benefit from losing the overdone love triangle and focussing more on some of the really interesting secondary characters. When Koli manages to make a piece of tech work, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn't the excellent character of Monono Aware. Between the sassy AI and the far more complex character of Ursula, the second half of the book comes alive in a way that the first half didn't. And whilst the initial narrative simply leads to the point of conflict with the village elders, those he was so determined to join by proving himself worthy of the tech, it quickly spirals out from that once Koli leaves the safe confines of the village walls.

I have to say, I'm really looking forward to reading the next book in this series as with much of the set-up already done, I imagine it will be more like the second half of this novel than the first and all the better for that. I had some qualms with this novel; the love-triangle aspect is overdone and always annoying and I'd have loved to read more about the unique setting of the world with the virulent and violent plants and what appear to be remnants of bio-engineered fauna. But this is a solid starting point, and one I really enjoyed. Even the strange dialect and broken speech patterns didn't annoy me overly once I got into the swing of them.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my free review copy of this title.

I very much enjoyed this book. It has a good story and excellent main characters. I would definately recommend this book.

Interesting story but didn't get going until half way through. A Dystopian world of the future following the destruction of the 'Old World'. Koli is the main character, whose speech is sometimes difficult to follow.

Crazy, because I have loved everything Carey has written prior to this, and The Girl with All the Gifts is one of my favourite reads, but I couldn't even finish this. It was just so slow - and it's set in a version of the area I live in, too, so I was so excited and then so disappointed. A DNF from me I'm afraid.

A good start to a new trilogy from Mike Carey (Hellblazer, Lucifer, The Girl With All The Gifts). It takes a bit of concentration as the language is a recreation of English. I found this made it difficult to really get into a flow with the book, it was either disruptive or at times smart/funny in the ways that the words had evolved.

This first book in the Rampart trilogy is a joy to read. We meet Koli Woodsmith who grows up in his community of Mythen Rood. This is a small locked in community that has to ward itself against anything that is outside its walls from animals to humans to plants and trees. Specially nature itself seems to have turned dangerous for humans and meeting a tree when the sun is out is something that is not ever recommended. It is more likely than not that the human will not survive the encounter.

We see Koli growing up, following the beliefs and rituals of his community. In his teens, he starts to go looking for his own answers, having quite a few questions and what he discovers sets him onto his own journey of self discovery that will take him out of Mythen Rood.

The world we are introduced to is a dystopian England some centuries in the future. Our current civilisation is only a shadow on the horizon, its last remnant it seems is old tech, that can provide protection against plants, animals and other humans provided someone can bring the old tech back to life. These people who can do so are called Ramparts within Koli's community. They are the ones who stand between the community and a dangerous outer world. And so it is no wonder that they have power and a special status.

I requested an eARC from publisher via Netgalley mostly, because I was so intrigued with the cover and the plants that seem to take over the world. In this first book, nature is present as a continuous danger that you always have to be aware of but it is not an agent by itself nor do you get a full illustration of what plants and trees are capable of in this world.

However, we do meet an interesting couple of characters in this book, some are human, others more of the artificial intelligence respectively tech kind.

Now and again we find traces of our own current time period within the book as reflecting back on something that is considered to have passed, but, generally, very little memory about our time period has been conserved.

The book takes us onto a journey of discovering who Koli is and how he became who he now is. It is a story about growing up and getting things so wrong and yet so right, and then having got to go and find your own way if you want to or not.

I enjoyed this book, even though Koli speaks a peculiar English that needs some getting used to. If you are afraid to loose your proper English by reading a book with grammatically incorrect sentences, then this book is definitely not for you, as it comes with its own grammar rules and sentence building.

I read this as an expression of the illiteracy of the time period we are in with Koli, where the spoken word is the only way you have to talk about what surrounds you and build an understanding of what is and what is not and what matters most. Books, writing and the written word have mostly been lost as has the idea of a virtual world.

This book also contains the saviour trope that is often used dystopian books. As I am not particularly a fan of this trope my eyes started to roll when it showed up on the page. However, I think, the author made good usage of this trope.

I am curious to see where the journey takes Koli next and am excited to discover more about this strange world that feels on some levels so familiar and yet takes us forward to a humanity that is mostly existing on the level of hunter-gatherers within an increased hostile natural environment.

The Book of Koli
M. R. Carey
Publisher: Orbit
Page count: 416pp
Release date: 16th April 2020

Koli is a teenager who comes from Mythen Rood, a village with two hundred 'souls' in a dystopian world.
unlike the majority of his siblings, he is mixed race with brown skin, and he’s one of seven.
Ramparts are the ones who can ‘wake’ technology and out them to use as weapons, but there are only three ramparts who are all associated with the one family.
The only weapon they really had was to uproot or burn, as choker seeds forinstance, will root straight in and take over if they land on skin.

We're quickly made aware that historically, the Biological engineering of trees to grow faster and nurture in any soil or environment after the trees had all died, caused 'genetic triggers’
Nature now destroys and the trees will eat them if given half a chance, so those who remain live in protected archaic settlements.

Part one of a trilogy, we know that the narrator is Koli as an adult thinking bsck, recording his memories. The narrative is written in a wonderfully lyrical, first person, colloquial voice. When Koli says "It's so their names won't fall out of the world and be forgotten. I owe them better, and so do you." he hooks us into the story, straightaway like storytellers of old, who travelled the world sharing their tales for food and shelter. His literary voice grabs hold of you and doesn't let go until his story is done. And what a terrific story It is.
It is somewhat reminiscent in style to books such as Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying' or Toni Morrison's 'Beloved'.
He's your everyman; a regular guy who doesn't mince his words, but even when he tells us that "The things they left behind save us and hobble us," you don't need fancy words to feel what he's saying.
The use of casual language and phonetic spellings for words which are half-recognised, such as 'alarum '/alarm, or the the far off town of 'Half-Ax' in 'Ingland', helps Carey build a world filled with simple people trying to survive, a local dialect and world we vaguely recognise as our own, but something terrible has gone wrong. Like Faulkner, it is very much a stream of consciousness style, with odd vignettes narrated by others to show their observations of linked evens.
The early clue we served to how dangerous this world is, is with the wood young Koli works on from the safety of Mythen Rood. Though he dreams of being Rampart, and having power, Rampart law says you can't use wood to build anything unless 'the planks had steeped in stop-mix for a month and was dead for sure.'
If you don't, there's a good chance that whatever you're building from the wood will come alive.
This is a type of eco horror I expect we will see more of as the effects of climate change are realised. Nature is the enemy and tech, or old tech, at least for Koli, is something that is positive and hopeful. Yet it is his naive desire for tech and a match with Spinner that has him make his first major mistake as he heads into young adulthood, showing that actions have consequences.
Other characters we meet such as Ursala, who manages old medical tech, is one of the first people to make him think, and question, and though it starts him off on a journey - metaphorical and physical - it is the quest for answers that helps him grow as a person and we begin to understand just how smart he is. Like most of us, he's human and makes mistakes along the way. One great thing about Koli though, is how he accepts the trans people he meets along thebway, who like now, are subjected to prejudice.
Amidst the brilliant worldbuilding, we have some truly horrific, jaw dropping but also witty and outright funny moments. As for characters he meets along the way, it is Monono who surprises the reader in wonderful ways.
Carey also through stories shares some truly terrible yet funny 'dad-jokes'. Take for example the groan worthy ' top 100' things to do before you die.
This is a truly remarkable book, with a hopeful ending which will lead into book two, something we need right now

I love the way Carey writes. No matter the book I feel like I have been transported to an alternate world and get completly wrapped up in the story. This is no exception.
Nature is taking on humans and humans are scared. natural human behaviours take over and are perfectly realistic in this dystopian story - I m eagly awaitng the next two books!

Unfortunately the book stopped workin after a little while, so I couldn't finish it. Seemed to be a DRM-issue.

Firstly, an apology to the publisher and author; this book has taken me far longer to finish than anticipated when I requested it. I normally read on my commute and when lockdown occurred, I lost that time as lucky enough to work from home. Also lost motivation to read a physical book during lockdown, which could not have been predicted. In the past couple of weeks I have very slowly been getting back to it though.

Before lockdown occurred, I was struggling with this book and so very nearly abandoned it. The writing was very clunky and I found the story rather dull. It took so long for anything decent to actually occur, and when it did it was about 40% in. Don't get me wrong, world building is great but there was just far too much of it and far too much sameness in the beginning.

Once the story really kicks in however, it moves along at a good pace. We're introduced to more of the world outside the village, which was sorely needed quite frankly, and Koli himself becomes more interesting to read about.

Despite struggling with this book initially, I did end up enjoying it and glad I stuck with it. The ending leaves scope for another book set in this world, and I think that would be more interesting to read as a lot of the world building and characterisations have already been accomplished.

Koli is, like so many boys his age (mid-teens), a bit angry, a bit in love and quite confused about his future. He lives in Mythen Rood (I loved the fact that I knew exactly where that is), a village surrounded by forests which are full of carnivorous trees and clearings full of desperate men (who would probably also eat you). He has fallen in love with a motherless girl but loses her to his closest friend so his one hope is to do well in the coming-of-age ceremony that the three of them must undergo. This world has lost all of the technology we take for granted and the ceremony is to find out who is worthy to join the elite group who lead by virtue of their mastery of the vanishingly few pieces of tech left to them. Koli doesn’t see, until it is too late, that the power is confined to one family and that he will never be considered good enough.

Koli manages to steal one small electronic item – a music player – which leads to him being expelled from the only safe society he has ever known. Thrown into a world of killer trees, cannibalistic tribes and personality cults his only help comes from Ursala (a sort of wandering healing woman who visits Mythen Rood on her regular rounds of the few remaining communities with her own tech – which doubles as weapon and diagnostic tool) and the music player, Monono Aware, whose personality develops when she decides to run some updates.

This is the first part of a trilogy so I’ll be looking out for the next set of Koli’s adventures – where we may learn more about what happened to all the technology and why (and how) the trees became killers.

I enjoyed this book in the end but it was a little slow to start. It had that Knife Of Never Letting Go style of misspelling due to having a child narrator who never got education because that's how this dystopia works... thing going on. Which was fine eventually but it took a little getting into. It could ruin the book for a few people, I'm sure.

It was an interesting beginning though with Koli's childhood and the village he lives in, despite the slower pace.

I was left unsure if the frequent illusions to big things happening in the future because the story is told in hindsight was keeping me interested in the story or if the story itself was keeping me interested and that particular narrative technique was just pissing me off. Still can't decide now I've finished the book.

Once the story got rolling, it rolls well. I liked the characters, despite there not being many. I thought the world building was good, especially the mentions of current day places within England. Enjoyable read, and I look forward to the sequel. I'm not sure why it's not being marketed as a young adult book because it was very young adult in writing and themes to me.

We live in strange and worrying times.

The dystopian nature of this novel is so easily reflected in our current situation where the hubris of humankind is catastrophically displayed in nature taking control, leading to an 'Ingland' where the people -we the readers- are a long distant memory.

Various relics exist from 'our' time ,forming the basis of myths and legends surrounding those who are able to 'call' or connect with the data.Those who can do this are granted a title as 'Rampart' , at a  ceremony which takes place when the increasingly small number of children in the village that Koli and his family live in, reach the age where they are called to the 'Waiting House' to meet their future destiny.

As we used to do in older times, people chose their surnames based on their skill set so, 'Woodsmith', 'Tanner' etc are their new family names. This reflects a smaller set of individuals working together for a common good-survival.

Koli, his sisters and mother spend their days inside the walls of their settlement, raised on stories of our time where tech and data ruled, and man's interference with nature led to the trees gaining a sense of pleasure when tasting the flesh of people. So there are killing plants and trees, ad amongst them, the shunned men who are cannibals and someohow live outside of this society.

Koli is the narrator of the novel, creating a sense of believability that I think can only come from the sense of a teen trying to understand the world he is living, in by relating it in his narrative. Through his eyes, we become aware of the changes in the place we know as the UK, the challenges of living -child bearing is an increasing concern for the inhabitants of Mythen Rood-the societal hierachy and the way that society has collapsed.

It is told with a dreamlike sense of uncertainty , where Koli's notions of what is, and what was, are based on myths and tale telling supported by a narrative which surrounds the buildings in Mythen Rood, his awareness of what lies beyond the walls of the town and his own sense of where he fits in. This could have been expositional in a way that a lot of young adult fiction is written, but with MR Carey's skillful handling of the tale, it becomes almost like a lullaby, a soporific and dream like state which you fall into whilst reading that conjures a world not so far distant from our own.

The most obvious connections that I felt when reading this was the conflict between nature, and nurture along wiith the Frankenstein-esque sense of humans as not knowing what they are doing when they presume to level themselves with te great creator, God. In the absence of a 'God' in this world-referred to as the 'dead god'-this is used as a cautionary tale to keep the people safe. Misplaced belief in a system where experimentation has gone so far wrong, that is has forever changed human reality is, after all, what Koli is living through.

The whole 'just because we can doesn't mean we should' theme is a narrative threaded through most dystopian fiction, as well as trying to establish the 'new normal'. Koli's sense of the world and how he grows into it are remarkably mature themes, told through a narrative voice which is both compelling and easy to listen to. MR Carey does not waste page after page creating new languages, new myths and science in a world not far removed from our own, he world builds through the eyes of a growing teen becoming aware of his place in the world. He has to make the choice that all of us do-stay in the world he knows, confined by the safety afforded by the ruling family, or leave and face being killed either by those who stand outside of society-the shunned men-or carniverous vegetation.

The quest to become a 'Rampart' -a holder of one of the three pieces of tech left in this world-is where his self-awareness of his part in his family, and wider society's, future, stannds on a precipice of discovery. A secret about the Mythen Rood ruling family, his loyalty to a system which favours this family, falling in love and finding your destiny are all well known tropes in the post apocalyptic y.a world. However, I found that Koli's voice was one that compelled me to listen to him, one that sets him and his world up with a solid foundation and room to grow in the upcoming sequels.

'The Book Of Koli' is definitely one to read in my humble opinion, as we try and make sense of the real world and it's state of uneasiness, where the people who do the menial tasks in society are now afforded the moniker of 'hero', where those relied upon have the oldest skills (farming, nursing, teaching) become the most needed amongst us, where isolation and fear are daily concerns , this is a book for our times.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. The world-building and ideas in this book were superb - the man-eating wildlife! The mystery of what was beyond the walls was super intriguing. Can't wait to read the next book in this series!