This is a road trip book, and a very strange trip it is. Firewalkers are people who go into the deadly Ankara desert, usually on repair or salvage missions, from the town that supports the beanstalk elevator that's taking all the folk who can afford it off of the burning planet Earth. Mao, the leader and brawn of his little group, takes Lupe (a mechanic) and Hotep( a hacker) off on a job that promises good pay. Some of the solar panels that power the estates around the beanstalk and even up the stalk itself have begun to fail and people who matter have begun to complain.

Although Mao and Lupe have always been poor, Hotep comes from a beanstalk family. She was sent down because she could not fit in with what was expected up there (she is neurodivergent) and she's pretty pissed about the injustice of it all. She's a bit of a loose cannon for the rest of the team to contend with.

But there's plenty of other stuff out there too. The threat of giant bioengineered insects who might eat you, creepy abandoned estates with robots that are a bit too intelligent, and other things that I can't mention for fear of spoilers. But it's weird out there, and the stakes abruptly become quite high.

Although the book ends at a good place for Mao and the gang, I wonder if they have sown the seeds of their own destruction with their decisions, as happens.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is incredibly talented and highly prolific. It is well worth your time to seek out a copy of this essential cli-fi fable.

Novellas can be so hit and miss. It’s a quick and easy read that does take a look at deep issues.
Not his best but overall enjoyable.

Es bastante complicado mantenerse al día de los lanzamientos de un escritor tan prolífico como Adrian Tchaikovsky, pero no por ello vamos a dejar de intentarlo. En este caso la escasa longitud de Firewalkers facilitaba la tarea.


Se trata de una obra sobre el cambio climático y sus consecuencias, aunque quizá más sobre el hecho de que ya sea irreversible y cómo se podría vivir después de la catástrofe. Hablamos de una ciencia ficción de futuro cercano y he de decir que bastante pesimista, con una crítica nada velada a las desigualdades sociales donde las clases altas siguen viviendo rodeadas de privilegios a salvo de las inclemencias meteorológicas y la inmensa mayoría de la humanidad ni siquiera tiene segura su próxima comida.

En este contexto seguiremos la actuación de los firewalkers del título, jóvenes que se arriesgan a enfrentarse al desierto y sus peligros para recuperar el funcionamiento de las instalaciones fotovoltaicas que todavía alimentan los resorts de los ricos. La ironía es sublime.

El problema que le encuentro a esta historia en particular es que está bastante deslavazada, con una sucesión de anécdotas que no parecen tener conexión entre sí. Aunque en los momentos finales si que vuelve a recuperar la tensión, la verdad es que la historia y los personajes no acaban de cohesionar en un todo atractivo. Me gusta el tono reivindicativo, pero realmente las soluciones que se dan son un tanto rocambolescas, movidas quizá más por una búsqueda de un final feliz que de una consecución lógica de acontecimientos. En la primera parte de la narración el autor también cae en una serie de repeticiones que entiendo son innecesarias y lastran el ritmo de la historia, que como ya he dicho es bastante corta y quizá por eso no se note en demasía esta reiteración.

Considero que hay libros del mismo autor bastante más recomendables que este Firewalkers, que a mí no me ha convencido.

i really enjoyed reading this book, it had great scifi elements with interesting characters. I liked getting to know the characters and would be interested in more from the universe.

I could hardly put this one down. Distophies are still something I can not get enough of, considering the urgency of our own way of destroying our home, I think there can't be enough of those out there.
Well rounded with smart and relatable characters this is a must read for sci-fi fans.
I will definitely pick up more of Tchaikovsky's work.

I have to say this might be the most forgettable book I have read all year. I was just not very interested in it and wish I skipped it. There were some good ideas in this book but I was overall not impressed.

This book is about young people who go out into a post apocalyptic earth and gather supplies for the last of humanity on planet earth. Sounds great right? Not really just ehh. Giant bugs, AI, and a cool setting couldn’t save it for me sorry.

I may be slightly biased with my review as Adrian Tchaikovsky is one of my favourite authors.

This is a post-apocalyptic novel where temperatures on earth have soared and therefore most people have left the planet except for the Firewalkers who stay on earth to protect the elevator which is used to take the few resources that remain to the off planet colonists.

I really enjoyed this book and found the concepts explored to be really interesting.

I didn't see a lot of the twists coming but I would have liked the book to be slightly longer.

The only issue I had is that I decided to listen along to the audio while reading this and as this is based on the equator, most of the people spoke which very heavy accents. This means that as I play my audio as the same speed I read, there were parts where I wouldn't have been able to tell what was being said if I hadn't been reading along.

This novella wasn't quite what I was expecting (I thought it was set on Mars, for some reason, rather than a climate change ravaged Earth) but it's a fun tale. The first half is full of slightly confusing worldbuilding, but the second half features some nice twists on classic sci-fi tropes. And of course, this being an Adrian Tchaikovsky book, there are bugs. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I tried twice to read Firewalkers and have now just given up. Though I am obviously in the minority of reviewers the story was just too slow with characters I could not identify with. the story of a dystopian future thatwas, to me, not explained very well. The stories I like are those with the potential for a positive ending. Did not see that happening here. Hope you can enjoy it.

Nguyēn Sun Mao is a firewalker, that is, a fixer who, with a trusted crew, will venture out into the withering heat of near future, global-heating afflicted tropical Africa to mend tech.

The little community he lives in - Ankara Achouka - owes its existence to a rich-person project to escape the heat and death. Ankara it, literally, the site of the Anchor (or one of them), the foot of a space elevator that serves the building starship Grand Celeste. Workers were gathered from around the world ('There'd been plenty out of Vietnam who'd needed somewhere that wasn't underwater right about them') to construct it, repopulating zones previously abandoned as the temperature rose.

Scattered around in the desiccated countryside are the abandoned villa estates of the monied who got together to fund escalator and starship, the labs and research stations where it was designed, and square kilometres of solar panels to power everything. It's all pretty much abandoned now as the last few passengers drive, stay briefly in Ankara and make their way to their berths. Mao and his ilk scratch out a bare living keeping those panels running to serve the hotel and town, and fixing this and that.

Of course, this book involves a trip out of town into the heat and into danger, a trip that will change things for ever...

Tchaikovsky packs a great deal into this short book. There's the closely observed relationship between Mao and his team - Lupé, who 'just liked the feel of the metal under her fingers', Hotep, 'the space girl', a young woman expelled from the Celeste because she didn't fit in ('She laughed at the wrong times, cried at the wrong things, took the wrong message from jokes,,,') - one of the elite, born, in her view, to be an astronaut, but now to be left behind, she's an ambiguous figure ('she had a right to be mad, maybe, but that didn't make her the avenging champion of the world either'), which is reflected in the way everyone around her behaves.

There are heartbreaking, truly fearful descriptions of the ruin of Earth, the dry river beds, dusty plains and long-gone animals and and trees (trees are now just something strange you see in old pictures- were they ever real?) The repellant, processed food. And, everywhere, the legacy of the rich who, rather than try to fix things, squandered resources on building themselves an escape route.

It is a really grim vision, but in these times of one rule for the powerful, one for the rest of us, it hardly takes much persuasion that these might be the consequences, this might come true.

There is, also, of course, a mystery driving events here. Just what's causing the power drops that Mao is sent out to fix? The job takes him and the team way, way out into the badlands, to areas rumour populates with the strange, dangerous relics of experiments, where possibly labs still run on auto, tampering with who knows what. Mao is chosen for having survived one nightmare trip already but this time he faces different challenges.

There is some beautiful (and clever!) writing here ('the libido faction in Mao's personal government tabled a motion', 'They were heading for the Heart of Brightness', a sun 'the head of a white hot rivet just driven in by some celestial smith'). I loved the way that Mao's, and his crew's, expectation of the ruined, abandoned villas they discover, and the civilisation they represented, is all mediated through popular dramas which themselves don't comprehend what they're portraying, or the grimly realistic cultural attitudes embedded in the text, exposed when Lupé finds a working mirror screen that, to flatter, smooths the blemishes from her skin - and renders it 'a good few shades lighter'.

While there's a SF core to the novel in its background of climate disaster, space travel and future tech, the events are all driven by the consequences of flawed humanity as we know it and can see it today. There's no redeeming hero trying to fix things, indeed from what we see of the powerful here they're all about to begin a scramble over each other for escape, leaving Mao and his like to wither in the heat.

Which is what makes it - despite the temperatures experienced by Mao and Co! - still a chilling read. It's a book I'd recommend, as temperature records fall and we hear talk of colonies on Mars which, I'm sure, won't be for you and me...

This novella shines a light on to a dystopian future where climate change, capitalism and class have brutalised the human story on Earth. Mao, Lupe and Hotep are firewalkers, who repair and retrieve tech from the brutal equatorial desert to supply the Anchor, the base of the space elevator that takes those who can afford it and who fit the profile up to the waiting space liner. Given the task of figuring out why the power supply from the solar fields is browning out Mao & co. set off into the desert in a 'bug' which is barely up to carrying the three of them, keeping them cool (ish) and supplying them with water. They make some discoveries that pretty well change the way they see the world. The characters, particularly Mao, are well drawn. Mr. Tchaikovsky manages to wrap a gritty, gripping adventure into a piece that starkly outlines our own (current and future?) social problems. It's a quick read, but when it comes, the ending is fast, maybe too fast. This is a novella, but it could so easily have been a novel. The last chapter had enough to fill a book (and one I would be happy to read)..

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
However, my review may be slightly biased because I am a huge fan of his books.

When a science fiction book plot is so close to reality that is actually scary. That is exactly what you can find in Firewalkers.

It was really devastating, reading a world where the rich and privileged are able to live in space, while the rest of the humanity, not rich, powerful or “necessary” enough have to remain on Earth. An Earth that is on the verge of destruction. Where the global warming has made inhabitable most of the planet, made extinct most animals and plants. Everything was set up, in case any problems arise, the people who remained in Earth would go and fix it even though this implies going towards the worst part of the planet, literally risking their lives and sometimes sacrificing themselves, so the small privileged people could live surrounded by luxuries and commodities.

The future was scarily believable and the plot was very well paced. It is not a very large book, and its chapters are quite short, which makes it a very easy an enjoyable read. The plot is very dynamic, once the main plot has started, and the characters are different enough for the reader to love them for their particularities but still realistic enough.

The ending for me is slightly bittersweet. On one hand, I really liked the idea and the message of it, but on the other hand it clashed slightly with the idea of the world that was created. Sorry if this sounds too vague, but regarding the end, I rather not give away too much. Nevertheless, feel free to ask me if you want to.

However, for me, the best part of the book is what I have already ranted about: it’s message. I feel like it was not too much in your face, so it turns more moralistic but not too subtle that only insinuates stuff. A very enjoyable read for me that, although too short for my personal liking, reaffirms my biasing for Tchaikovski.

I'll be short: this a great story that mixes sci-fi and dystopian and it's full of food for thought as you cannot help reflecting on how the world building reflects our real world.
The characters are well thought and likeable, the plot is gripping and entertaining, the world building is excellent.
It was an excellent read, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I won’t deny that initially I struggled a bit with this one. This setting is brilliantly portrayed and therefore rather on the bleak side. Tchaikovsky’s depiction of a parched, dying world where not even heat-adapted animals and vegetation can any longer survive is very well done. As ever, he manages to weave in Mao’s back story in with the ongoing action so that I quickly bonded with this gutsy, capable youngster, struggling to keep himself and his family fed and watered in this harsh environment. The science is well done, again, without holding up the pace with chunks of indigestible information. And soon enough, I was caught up in the adventure as the three youngsters set off into the heat discover why the power from the solar panels isn’t getting back to Anchor.

I couldn’t see how this was going to end in anything other than a rather downbeat, grim message about what we were doing to the planet – and though I won’t deny that is wrapped up within the story – Tchaikovsky also manages to deliver an ending with plenty of hope, after a tale packed full of incident and well executed story twists. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this adventure and it comes highly recommended for fans of clif fi and coming-of-age stories in challenging settings. The ebook arc copy of Firewalkers was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
9/10

In a not-so-distant future, the Earth has become a scorched hell zone. The very rich have escaped to orbiting habitats, accessed by space elevators. At the base of each, service townships (Ankara – not the Turkish capital, to save you my confusion!) have sprung up, populated by the likes of Mao. Mao is a young Firewalker – someone who will head out to the sunstruck wastes to fix the solar panels and tech that keeps the Ankara viable. It’s a deadly job, but when his other option was facing the bugs of the protein farm…

Adrian Tchaikovsky has a thing for bugs, as his previous works have shown – slight trigger warning for that, I suppose, but I loathe wriggly things and coped just fine.

In this novella, he manages to create a highly believable world, a set of intriguing characters, and switch direction at least twice. The pace is almost a little too much, but it certainly keeps the interest! I did wonder if the use of slang and dialect was going to be irritating, but very quickly I settled into it and it adds plenty of atmosphere – another way to create this world in a truncated way.

Mao pulls in a couple of skilled friends to head out to discover why the power to the township is failing. We get a sense of their lives, the new ‘world order’, and the results of a couple of hundred years of continued climate change. The timing is so coincidental: young people heading into life-threatening danger, the only way they can scrape a living, to save the privileges of the super-rich.

I won’t spoil the huge twist in direction, but it wasn’t what I was expecting! It wasn’t what the group were expecting to find in the middle of a barren desert, either…!

As I said, there’s a lot packed in to a fairly short tale. Well worth the read, and all too relevant for our times, in many ways… let’s hope we don’t head quite the same way, eh?!

This was my second Tchaikovsky novella, the first was Small Things which I loved, so I went into this read with excitement. Then the pandemic hit and I work in the medical field so things go put off for a bit. I had some down time to curl up with a book recently and a novella was exactly what I needed. The rich destroy a planet and the poor work to keep it and themselves together. No this was in the book, not in real life. The characters were rich and well developed which is not something you always see in a shorter book. The pacing was excellent and the plot twist was superb. I really enjoyed this read and I appreciated the opportunity to review it.

I was provided with a copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
***Please note that portions of conversation in this novel featuring Afrikaans and Bantu. I cannot speak to the accuracy of the language used.

Firewalkers by Adrian Tchaikovsky takes place in a world ravaged by climate change. Instead of attempting to fix the world, the rich commissioned space ships tethered tot the Earth by anchors. As the world becomes more and more inhospitable, they fled to space. The community around the anchor ensures the rich continue to live in luxury. Firewalkers venture out to solve problems out in the ever widening desert with very few returning.

At the beginning of the novella, a trio of firewalkers head out into the desert to look into a power issue affecting air conditioning for the rich. As they venture far south into the desert, they encounter the ways the world in rapidly changing and the role past creations will have in the future of the world.

I thought the novella held an interesting premise, but it just didn't come together for me in terms of plot or the narration style. The narrator is quite distant from the action, even when terrible things are occurring around the main characters. The distance made it hard to care about the outcome of the encounters. Even the ending felt anti-climactic because it was all told in past tense. The climactic moments that may have lead to an interesting conversation about who deserves to live and die based on the decisions of past generations was swept aside to further a problematic romantic entanglement.

Since this novel is working in the vein of climate fiction, I was expecting more conversations around scarcity and what it means to live in a world that is growing more inhospitable by the day. However, there are no conversations about how the world could be changed until the end and even that was passed over very quickly. I think I just wasn't a fan of how sparse the writing style was. I just wanted something more evocative.

Two and a half out of five stars.

Don't believe it's possible for fiction to be enthralling whilst also addressing urgent topical issues? Then let Mr Tchaikovsky prove you wrong in Firewalkers. Not only does it explore the links between class and climate change but it discusses capitalism and its issues, the vastly different lives of the rich and impoverished and the often brutal unfairness of life, all within the context of this compulsive standalone science fiction novella. Earth is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland due to significant climate change whereby the sun has scorched the planet almost turning it to desert and the wealthy have managed to use their money to build spaceships on which to leave a destroyed Earth behind to linger someplace more inhabitable. Of course, those with little to their name bear the brunt of it all and haven’t the means to keep their families fed and clothed never mind being able to afford the luxury of simply upping sticks and leaving it all behind. They live in the hope that one day they'll be able to join those who are more fortunate.

It follows Firewalkers Mao, Lupe and Hotep, a group of youngsters who are sent to repair vital infrastructure or retrieve items from the searing hot desert when necessary. Their employment is secured by promises of money, food, water and medicine, fuelling their hope that they will be able to leave soon too. This is a superb and exhilarating read right from the beginning and has both a stellar plot and impressive characterisation; it's what we've come to expect from Tchaikovsky and he never seems to let us down. Surprisingly for a novella, the cast is well fleshed out and come alive on the pages. It's a captivating, disturbingly bleak and all too real tale and one that cuts very close to the bone in that it captures impeccably how we are at a crossroads where we must make a decision as humans for the good of humanity whether we simply carry on in the way we have been or change our ways to save our planet. A sophisticated and thought-provoking piece. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Solaris for an ARC.

4.0 / 5 ✪

https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/firewalkers-by-adrian-tchaikovsky-review/

The second Tchaikovsky novella in two years, Firewalkers features a cast entirely too young to drink, but old enough to wander the post-apocalyptic wastes of the world, fighting and dying for nothing more exotic to us than A/C. Hitting the shelves next week, most of us will be forced to get it via ebook, though it proves entertaining in any format. Just make sure you appreciate the cover—courtesy of Gemma Sheldrake—which is quite eye-catching, don’t you think?

The city of Ankara Achouka isn’t perfect. There’s never enough food, medicine, or water. There are rolling blackouts, if you can find electricity at all. Jobs are scarce, money is even scarcer. But here, at the base of the Anchor, those things are at least present. The rest of the planet is burning. Deserts and wastelands cover the world, the only refuge from the dying world being aboard the Grand Celeste—the only space station in orbit above the Earth. A space station connected via space elevator at Ankara.

At the base of the elevator sits the Anchor—the only area of government control left in Ankara, perhaps even the world—and within its domain the so-called “Roach Hotel”, a resort that caters to the super-rich and elite, so named for the fact that they check in, but never check out. This is where those powerful or connected enough spend their last days on planet, before ascending the elevator to orbit and the Grand Celeste. The hotel has food, water, and amenities. Amenities including A/C, since just because the planet is burning, god forbid the 1%-ers get a little uncomfortable.

But when the power goes on the fritz, someone has to go check and repair the solar panels—located far the south amidst the desolate wastes. Enter the Firewalkers. They leave the city to scavenge, scout, and yes, fix the power. Firewalkers are all young and desperate. Or the insane. They have a short life-expectancy, on account of the raiders, the predators, the heat, the desolation, the unknown beyond the bounds of Ankara Achouka. Only those with no future and no better option would consider the life of a Firewalker.

Mao is one such man. A legend at only nineteen—a middling age for one of his profession—he once walked back to Ankara through the wastes after an accident that killed his entire crew. Joining him are Lupé and Hotep, two of the best in their respective fields. Their mission: to restore the power to the Roach Hotel, before some of the elite lose their cool. Their lives have already been filled with disaster, but this trip into the wastes may well be their last.

If Adrian Tchaikovsky is the master of anything, it’s science fiction. Specifically science fiction with the most distasteful of organisms. His Shadows of the Apt series features a whole host of insects, while the Echoes of the Fall deals with predators. Children of Time plays host to spiders, and several novellas feature several other creepy crawlies. This one is no different, as, in Firewalkers, he returns to bugs.

I can’t get much into it without giving everything away, but if you have a problem with or a phobia of insects… maybe skip this one? Otherwise it’s a highly entertaining post-apocalyptic read. The characters are lovely, each with their own personalities and loyalties that evolved to impressive levels, particularly with this only being a novella (albeit a long one). All are well-written, as each portrays both strengths and weaknesses, making them seems very, very human.

The setting itself is quite interesting—something of a cross between the world of Metro and the Darwin Elevator, with Tchaikovsky’s particular brand of chaos thrown right in. Though I’d really’ve liked to know more about the state of the world. There’re hints of additional space elevators, the status of which is unknown. The setting itself is a bit of a mystery; I was guessing Africa somewhere, though the most famous Ankara is in Turkey. Other than these few hints, the world itself is hidden in the fog. Or, it’s burned up. There’s very little given. It’s more the kind of story that’s “here’s the world, this is how it is—it’s not about what happened, it’s about the future”. I have a mind curious for details; I always wonder after what’s happened before.

While the story itself is pretty good, it isn’t the best thing I’ve ever read by Tchaikovsky. Firewalkers takes a decent amount of time to get moving, and there’re distractions along the way. It’s a solid 4-star tale, though there was a bit of a letdown at the end. Nothing big—the story was completed and all threads tied up nicely—it was just a bit underwhelming. While once I got into the meat of it I had no problem reading to the end, it took some time to get to the meat, as it were.

TL;DR

With a landscape like that of Hades and a plot out of Metro, Firewalkers tells a post-apocalyptic tale not quite like any other. Together with Tchaikovsky’s particular brand of chaos, it makes for an entertaining read—with excellent characters, a provocative setting, and good writing throughout. However, the story takes a bit to get off the ground, and wanders a bit more upon doing so. Additionally, the world-building itself seems incomplete, with little more told than those aspects directly relevant to the matter at hand. All in all, Firewalkers is definitely worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of the author, or short on reading material.