BelEdit Book Reviews
The Forcing Trilogy (The Forcing, The Descent, The Hope) is not just another eco-thriller. It’s an informed, loud and frightening ringing of every possible alarm bell, calling on us all to for fuck’s sake STOP before it’s too late!
Spoken like a true scientist
The Forcing Trilogy is written by someone who knows what he’s talking about more than most. His bio (see Orenda Books’ author page) portrays him as a modern renaissance man/global adventurer, and his many caps include engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist, university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) — in short, Paul E Hardisty’s international background and eco-credentials lend weight to his every word.
The effect is sobering. While the novels are speculative fiction warning of the potential existential threat of unchecked climate change, being aware at every moment that there’s arguably more fact than fiction here is, well, a tad depressing, to put it mildly.
But hold on… All that terrifying realism is leavened by plenty of genuinely exciting action and not a little humour. Moreover, trying to sort out the truth from the fiction is one of the fun parts of reading this and keeps you on your toes. (For example, the worst villains of the novels are pretty easily identifiable and are portrayed as being as despicable as their real-life counterparts. It’s not much of a spoiler to point to the aptly named Derek Argent (Elon Mu…) and President Bragg (Trum…); sorry, I can’t write their full names without puking.)
But I jump ahead. Here’s a very quick summary of each book.
The Forcing (Book One)
In the near future, climate change has caused devastating environmental, economic and social catastrophes. In North America, all people beyond a cut-off age, including David Ashworth, AKA Teacher, are being held to account for allowing it to happen, and exiled to camps. He and a small group of mismatched individuals escape. A couple of decades into the future, he records and tries to make sense of those events in a written journal.
The Descent (Book Two)
Some 40 years after civilisation collapsed, a man embarks on a voyage to Africa and beyond, to try to better understand the past and to rescue a family member. The narration is interspersed with chapters from the journal of a young woman who was a participant in and witness to many of the crucial events that led up to the collapse.
The Hope (Book Three)
Another decade or so later, a teenage girl with perfect memory, potentially the key to humanity’s future, is being hunted by those in power.
The Forcing Trilogy, Paul E Hardisty.
All those currently destroying the planet, please raise your hand
The Forcing Trilogy is uncomfortable reading for anyone who claims to be eco-conscious. In fact, it should be uncomfortable reading for everybody. Come on, we all know this is happening. We all know we are not doing enough to stop it. THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS, but meanwhile we keep driving ourselves towards the cliff edge. Even the so-called ‘climate skeptics’ know it, we know they know it and they know we know they know it. We are all complicit in allowing the Trumps and Musks and Peter Thiels and Putins and Orbans and Farages and the rest of the putrid narcissist broligarchs to manipulate and distract us into focusing on just about everything OTHER than driving towards that cliff. Meanwhile, The Forcing Trilogy reminds us that they’re all right, Jack, accumulating revolting, unthinkable wealth to build their bunkers and survival enclaves where they’ll continue to live like parasites while the rest of us….
Well, you get the picture.
You need to calm down and read a book!
I do tend to get a bit agitated about what’s going on in the world, and I’d be lying if I told you that reading this helped me with that. On the contrary. And let’s not shy away from the fact that it’s all too easy to direct your anger at others, at ‘the villains’, rather than face one’s own responsibility. Suffice to say that this story has been niggling at me pretty much non stop since I began, and will no doubt continue to do so. (The rest is between me and my conscience…)
But first, and after popping a much-needed blood pressure tablet, let me get back to what I was attempting to do here, namely write a BOOK REVIEW. As in, talk about style and characters and plot and structure and all that sort of thing.
Here’s where, if this were a ‘normal’ book review, I might be tempted to reconsider those 5 stars, and indeed in my first version of this [now updated] review, I did. But I deleted those minor criticisms. Because Hardisty is a compelling writer and these books have affected me profoundly. I don’t say this lightly: I literally can’t stop thinking about them. So trying to describe a few minor faults in style feels so pointless and inconsequential, in the face of the sheer IMPORTANCE of what Hardisty has to say.
A rallying call
In short, these books are about the collapse of the world we know, due to the actions of a small number of very powerful people bent on making money for themselves, above all else, helped by the inertia of the rest of us. Hardisty presents a vivid portrait of what our world is heading for. If nothing changes, nothing can stop it. It is terrifying and heartbreaking.
Book 3, The Hope, explores what might have been done in the past – i.e. now – to set humanity on a better path. It also turns to ‘what next, what now?’, decades in the future. I can only say: read it and find out.
Hardisty’s passion for his core theme – that the fate of humanity rests on protecting and saving our planet – shines through, lifting the narrative in places with lyrical and inspiring prose. His anger against the evil actors deliberately contributing to and hastening the destruction of our planet also shines through, fueling the readers’ anger. But these vital themes are wrapped in a story that is vivid, personal and immediate. And it’s action-packed, gripping stuff! The future of our world is shown through the eyes of characters dealing with dramatic events in their here and now, in scenes of often breathtaking intensity.
What does it take to make us listen and act?
The world’s scientists have been warning us for years about the climate. It’s not hard to imagine Hardisty, in his role as environmental consultant, presenting books and reports and Powerpoint presentations with detailed data and graphs and carefully calculated predictions. Like countless other specialists have done, again and again and again. Hell, I’ve been in some of those meetings. Which, if you look at where we are today, have apparently achieved very little, and certainly not enough. And what has been achieved over decades is now being rapidly dismantled, decimated, by right-wing governments and the broligarchs who keep them in power. Of course I don’t know ‘why’ Hardisty writes novels, or why he wrote these particular novels. But I know he has worked as an environmental consultant for years so he must be deeply frustrated. The frustration is apparent in every page of this trilogy. And you don’t need to be a specialist to share the anger and frustration. One can only suppose that he has turned to fiction to see if he can reach more people through stories than through boardroom presentations.
I hope so. For myself, I have not quite given up hope that the younger generation now reaching an age to take positions of power, however limited, can come together to stop the madness and find new pathways into the future. And if reading Hardisty’s books can help them find the inspiration they need to take action, so much the better. Maybe someday I and my contemporaries will indeed be held accountable by younger people working for change.
I kind of agree we deserve it.
You may also like: Ministry for the Future – Kim Stanley Robinson
AI DISCLAIMER ~ Let me take this opportunity to promise you that every word of this review, including this disclaimer, or of any of my book reviews, is written by me, one character at a time, generated in my head and conveyed via my typing fingers to the page, without any input or assistance from, or defilement by, AI, notwithstanding the correct (or indeed incorrect) use of em or en dashes, commas or other punctuation, of long sentences and/or complex sentence structures, or short paragraphs, or the occasional use of esoteric words — moreover, writing this disclaimer has taken an inordinate amount of time, not mere seconds, and if anyone can find a grammatical error herein, well, let that stand as proof of my assertion.