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.
(Note: This review is based on the first two books. I’ll update it after reading book 3.)
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, because, well, these are not perfect books. Hardisty is a compelling writer but fiction writing is not, perhaps, his number one strength. These are minor, very minor quibbles, but I could argue, for example, that:
- some of his characters are two-dimensional, and some are barely there at all (in book two, for example, the main character spends weeks crossing half the world in a boat with his four-year-old son but has almost zero interaction with him…)
- there are long sections with a lot of nautical detail; I thought them somewhat boring but appreciated them as a needed break from the hectic pace and tension of the main action, and they may be fascinating for some nautically-minded readers, but all that nautical stuff might be waaaayyyy too much for others. (You can always skim it…)
- the kinda-but-not-quite* dual timeline structure makes the narrative choppy at times; I found it added to the suspense, but it might not work for some readers. (* it’s not quite a standard dual timeline, more like a dual-timeline/flashback mesh).
A rallying call
Overall though, Hardisty’s writing is good, even very good in parts. His passion for his core theme, 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. And it’s action-packed, gripping stuff! What can be more gripping than the future of our world?
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 and must be deeply frustrated. I have experience (9 years of it…) working in a job where I tried to push an agenda and got pretty much nowhere, due to [what I at least perceived as] ‘bad actors’ putting spanners in the works at every opportunity. That was in a much less critical context than the climate crisis, so I can only guess at what drives him. But you don’t need to be a specialist to share the anger and frustration.
I can only hope that as many people as possible read Hardisty’s books and find in them the inspiration they need to take action. Maybe someday I and my contemporaries will indeed be held accountable by younger people working for change.
I sort of hope so.
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.