Member Review

Horror fans will likely know M. R. Carey, aka Mike Carey, best from The Girl With All the Gifts. In The Book of Koli, he brings us into another post-apocalyptic setting. This time, though, it’s one brought about by climate change, war, and scarcity, rather than a virus — and in the world that’s left, literally everything is trying to kill the survivors, who gather together in small villages and rely on the few remaining pieces of technology they have to defend themselves.

But what The Book of Koli is ultimately about is storytelling — how we construct ourselves and our world, and how we understand ourselves and our world, through the stories we tell ourselves and each other. We see this time and time again — in what the powerful Ramparts do and don’t tell the people of Koli’s village, Mythen Rood; in what Koli tells himself and the village to justify his taking of the piece of tech he later comes to know as the DreamSleeve; in how the DreamSleeve’s AI, Monono, grows to understand herself, and how she explains that understanding to Koli; in how the zealot Senlas gathers and keeps his followers.

The Book of Koli is about the power of stories. And I can’t wait to see where this particular story will go.