I really wanted to enjoy this book but I just couldn't. I put it down and came back to it after a few months and just still wasn't enjoying it though the story sounded interesting, I think it was writing style that just didn't work for me. I think others will enjoy it though.

dnf at page 65
trigger warning
<spoiler> mass death event, ptsd, trauma, grief </spoiler>

Planet Earth as we know it: The global temperature rise threatens to melt glaciers which will result in a rise of the sea levels. Whole coastal regions will be swallowed by the ocean, which will not only impact touristry but deplacing unknown quantities of humans and impact food growth. And that's only one of the many facets of the climate crisis.

This novel reminded me in it's writing a lot of World War Z, in that we have chapters from different sources. Some are what happens in the Ministry for the Future, some are quick recaps of things happening, some are experiences from people as they happen - and the latter is what made me dnf this book.

See, it was already <i>very</i> depressing which is not easy to read if you have chronic depression, but then PTSD came into play and triggered a PTSD episode of my own.

I think this novel is important and I am told it gets hopeful towards the end, but there is no way I am able to get that far rn. Maybe I will - ha - pick this up again in the future.

If you read this book or are interested in the topic in general, let me recommend the YT channel of Leena Norms where she does positive panic about the climate crisis. Not positive as in "Yay, we're all gonna die!" but as in "This situation is not our fault, but we have to deal with it. here are some ideas about how we could do that".

The arc was provided by the publisher.

The story plays in the near future, as devastating consequences of climate change start to hit and finally make people realise that profit doesn’t outweigh survival of the planet.

You get several perspectives: Frank, who survives a catastrophe, Mary, who leads the Ministry for the Future and tries to convince governments and people in power all around the world that saving the planet is the only important thing, and the occasional random person to tell you about happenings somewhere else. Plus some from the point of view of a proton and similar.

Characters: I didn’t particularly care for either character. The way Frank’s story starts out you expect him to do something drastic (or even more drastic than what he actually does). Mary is the more dynamic character but the real problem is their voices. None of the chapters was distinct enough from the other character’s to stand out.
Pacing: It starts off fairly strong, then gets into politics which slows down a lot of things, but not horribly so. The ending however meandered along without anything happening.
While the world-building was very detailed, it was sometimes just there for its own sake, e.g. when Mary takes a walk through Zurich. She gives you a great many details for her surroundings, and what she feels about certain things but it doesn’t do anything. Nothing happens on these walks, she doesn’t come to any great realisations, it’s just there to show you the city.
The message: The book delivers many points at which the change towards a better (or any) future could start or needs to be tackled from. Much like Mary in the book, it’s a constant struggle against greed and short-term views.
If you want a glimpse of what awaits Earth, read this. Personally I’d love to see the changes portrayed in the book but I fear that an equal disaster as the one described near the beginning or in LA halfway through needs to happen before the biggest contributors to CO2 emissions or environmental damage would value a future generation’s well-being above their own wealth.

This was my review in 2020: It's the first book I read by this author and I loved her style of writing, how well researched is and the world building.
Unfortunately I'm not in the mood for appreciating the bleak atmosphere and the story fell flat.
I will try to read it again when I'm feeling more optimistic.
At the moment it's not my cup of tea.
2021: I re-read it and even if there's plenty of good ideas, utopia I found it confusing and struggled with the plot.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Quick Review: ‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson
This speculative science fiction novel explores the possible future of the world, roughly following the Ministry of the Future (MotF), an independent agency tasked with tackling the climate crisis. Stanley Robinson leads us through a series of events – some good, some bad – that follow a devastating heatwave in India, as the world begins to see the consequences of climate change first hand and try to work against them. The narrative is a global one, and the viewpoints in this novel support that: we hear from glaciologists in the Antarctic, refugees from Tunisia, farmers in India and many more. Despite the emphasis on the global, Stanley Robinson has not forgotten the human element: we roughly follow several characters through the course of their lives as they do what they can to try and save the world, dealing with the strange everyday events of a human life.

This is a fascinating and primarily hopeful look at our future on this planet. It is part encouragement – we can help, we can change – and part scathing indictment of the world’s banks and trade organisations for not doing more.

I’m glad I read this book. There’s a deliberate drive for hope and change throughout that made it a refreshing speculative sci fi read. There were, however, parts of this book that I felt dragged a bit. It lost pacing in the middle – although that’s partly a plot point in itself – and I felt there were several points that felt more final than its actual end.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½
Genre: Science Fiction, Speculative Science Fiction
Representation: (Minor characters) Nonbinary, WLW.
Trigger Warnings: Terrorism, Global crisis, implied offscreen domestic violence, palliative care
Would I recommend this? Yes

I have read 33 chapters from this book, that is 23%. Here's my impression:

The author wanted to create a memorable book (well, they all do), and in a way he succeeded. This should be a fantasy - which it is not. It is the chapters of two books poured into a mixing bowl, stirred well, and bound into one piece of writing.

Book One is a fantasy set in 2025 when the parties of the Paris Agreement bitterly failed, and the signs of a climate disaster starts to show. I enjoyed those chapters that followed this storyline.

Book Two is a non-fiction read, a treatise on social injustice, various economic policies, the usage of cognitive behavioral therapy in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, and several other issues that could even be interesting, if they had anything to do with the narrative of the fantasy story.

What I read from this book did not give anything to me but it doesn't mean that it will not be a mindblowing experience for you. I recommend this to readers who enjoy and appreciate an unusual narrative and are interested in the climate crisis.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown Book for an Advance Reading Copy.

I struggled with this book. It is a huge tome, full of righteous indignation and fourth-wall-breaking exposition. Like a middling episode of The West Wing. But even though I'm a solar-punk-eco-hippie-vegan I felt like I was being lectured to.

In a sense, the book is like World War Z (the novel, not the movie) in that it is told from the first person perspective of lots of participants. As the world slowly dissolves into chaos, we see how a wide range of voices react. Sadly, it rapidly becomes confusing. Chapter headings don't tell you which character you're reading about, or what location you're in, or what the date is. That can be a quirky literary device, but in a book this long and complicated it is just annoying.

It's barely even speculative fiction, it feels like it was written tomorrow about the future that yesterday wished it had.

At times it feels like an economics lecture - by a hip professor who is trying a little too hard to engage in Socratic dialogue. Some chapters are just a page or two explaining an economic concept, or property of philosophy. Again, fun in small doses - but it gets a bit wearing.

Parts of the book feel like the author has literally copy-and-pasted a list from Wikipedia. How many animals have gone extinct? Here's a list! Why? At once point, the author simply lists 74 glaciers. No other information, just their names. It is needless filler.

The technobabble is... disconcerting. Take this example:

“The AI group is making open source instruments that mimic the functions of all the big social media sites.”
“So people can shift over to this new set?”
“Yes. And it will protect their data for them using quantum encryption.”

Yeah… Much like Gell-Mann Amnesia, I skipped over the quantum-blockchain-woo and pretended that the geoengineering science wasn't also word salad.

Is it a good book? I'm not sure. It's more like a political manifesto with the addition of some light speculation, rather than a fictional novel. Halfway through, I bailed on it. The characters have no real narrative arc, the (computer) science is dodgy, and the frantic cutting between locations slows the story without really providing any perspective. If I wanted to watch the world collapse, I'd turn on the nightly-news.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. The paperback book is available to pre-order now.

An extraordinary novel with dizzying scope! In a sense, it is light on plot and character, yet in another way it is packed full of it. One moment a committee meeting will be in focus, next Robinson has jumped through a microscope to tell the story of a carbon atom over the course of billions of years, then onto nations acting and reacting to one another on a macro level.

The novel asks the question of what it would take to make an about turn and save the planet from the effects of carbon burn. The time is in the near future and the planet is suffering. My understanding is that this marks a return to similar ground to Robinson's previous novels.

The book comes across as incredibly well-researched and though technical at many points, rarely gets bogged down. I can't claim to have understood every idea, but I remain astounded at the many angles that Robinson comes at the topic while maintaining a strong line of story throughout. He covers politics, psychology, economics, law, geoengineering and all sorts with great deftness.

There is a massive and pertinent question which Robinson asks of the reader: What part are you willing to play in saving the world for future generations? He presents the vision of a global community which brings itself together, creates a new sense of international citizenship and does what needs to be done.

Thank you Little, Brown Book Group UK, Orbit and NetGalley for providing me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. My review is my own and not influenced by others.

The first chapter was really intriguing and made me curious how the story would go. Unfortunately the rest of the book couldn’t hold my attention because the characters felt fled and the story was unbelievable. This is why I decided to DNF it, there are much better books to read than this book in my opinion.