As the world’s climate changes, animal species are expanding their range as they seek hospitable habitats so it only seems natural that humans will do the same thing as regions of our planet become unlivable. As a Canadian living near a southern neighbour that faces a future of water shortages and increasing temperatures, I imagine Americans will start migrating northward and the border that divides our countries will eventually become meaningless. In her debut novel, Camp Zero, author Michele Min Sterling gives us a glimpse of what that future could look like.

Set in the year 2049, the story focuses on the intertwined stories of a group of climate change survivors in a northern Canadian settlement, and is as much a novel about the societal effects of climate change as it is about class divisions in society.

The book follows three principal story lines that slowly paint a portrait of what this future world is like and reveal that human motivations of love and greed will never change. It opens with an introduction of Rose, an escort who has been to hired to work at the northern settlement of Camp Zero in exchange for a home for her Korean mother and herself in the Floating City, a utopian haven where the elite can escape and ignore the effects of climate change off the shores of Boston.

The second story line follows another character from Boston, but he is one of those elite, Grant Grimley, son of a rich family that has exploited the planet for generations. He’s come to Camp Zero thinking he is helping set up a new university, but his real motivation is that he wants to distance himself from his family and his past in a bid to become his own man.

The third principal story line follows the travails of the all-female crew of White Alice, a nearby Distant Early Warning station from the Cold War that has been turned into a climate research station. These chapters are written in the first person, unlike the other two story lines, which are in the third person so it’s a bit confusing at first, but not for long. Oddly, only one character from the crew is ever identified by name, Sal, the security specialist. The rest are merely referred to as the engineer, the botanist, the biologist and the meteorologist.

Camp Zero is full of little touches that build on each other to paint a perfectly imagined future. There are references to an oil ban where the world has begun transitioning away from fossil fuels and the man who is building the camp, Meyer, is also the inventor of ‘the Flick,’ a device that everyone has implanted behind their ear at birth to allow them to be perpetually online and connected. He’s an idealist who is somewhat disillusioned about his invention, but is perhaps seeking redemption as he builds this new community.

Rose is a ‘Bloom,’ one of several escorts who are here to entertain the management of Camp Zero, but she is singled out by Meyer to be his companion. Through their interactions we learn more about Meyer and Rose’s own past and motivations and her well-concealed disgust of the situation. We also learn more about Grant and his growing realization that Camp Zero is not what he was expecting. Over time, more characters are revealed and there are romantic entanglements and conflicts that bring the story lines together as the book comes to its conclusion.

While I enjoyed this book immensely and found it completely believable, my only complaint is how the story ended. I obviously won’t spoil it, but found that the ending was perhaps a bit too sudden and maybe even anti-climactic, but that doesn’t change my opinion that Camp Zero is a book worth seeking out and one worth reading.

In the near future, the earth has changed due to climate and everyone wants to move north to Canada. A few separate situations are going on here including a research station left to its own devices in Canada and a not so far away drilling project that has made camp including a troupe of escorts.

I really enjoyed this book and the way it ends leaves the possibility of a sequel. I enjoyed the characters at both the station and the camp and really enjoyed the plot. The book is a slow burn which may bother some readers but I'm ok with that as I'm all about characters and this book delivers. I was put off by the man-hating and that's mainly why my rating is a four instead of a five. I look forward to the author's next book.

3.5 stars

A near future (2049) dystopian novel in which the high temperatures, drought and rising sea levels of climate change have made living in much of world untenable (though this novel is concerned mainly with the US). The super-rich have retreated to artificial communities in impermeable bubbles, staffed by the poor, where the upper echelons continue to enjoy anything they crave, while most people struggle to survive outside. A group of rich investors has plans to build a community, to attract more of the monied elite, in Canada’s north, with its cooler temperatures, and the staging site is Camp Zero. It’s there that the disparate group of characters come together: the sex workers flown in to service the better-off denizens of the camp, the idealistic teacher recruited by (empty) promises of a college on-site, the labourers and their foreman, the female military researchers cum survivalists who’ve been staffing nearby Cold War era stations for decades but have long since been cut loose by home base, and so on and so on. Oh, and I musn’t neglect to mention the utterly predictable thread of the devious billionaire who has set all this in motion but whose real, hidden intentions are entirely evil. (Well, of course they are. Fiction seems always unkind to billionaires, whose true motives are generally secret and nasty in the extreme.)

Not terrible, but more concerned with plot than character development, and much of it seemed a bit too pat and predictable.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have come to the conclusion that I don't like dystopian fiction.

I can't tell you what this book is about because I have no clue. I was so confused most of the book. I felt there was too much going on and too many characters.

Unfortunately, it took every piece of me to read the entire book. The writing is mediocre. There isn't any depth aside from the massive holes dug into the ground for oil.

The author merely skated across the vast, frozen landscape of the Far North. Neither the characters nor the setting jumped off the page. They were just plopped down and there they stayed.

This was a tough one for me to pen an honest review...but here I go.

Being a dystopian setting/genre, I feel like there was just too much going on and not enough symmetry and closure. Leaving a reader open at the end of a book is one thing, but leaving vital details out of the book which makes the story hard to follow is another.

I'd like to start by saying that the PDF format of this book that was sent to me was not the greatest to view on my kindle (not sure why), so when I was able to get the audiobook from my library, I quickly switched to that version.
Unfortunately, it didn't help having the audio version because there were too many characters and I easily lost track of the who's and what's and where's of the story lines.

Needless to say that there were some characters and storylines that had potential, but all fell flat and were not relatable for me, leaving me more in wonder and questioning "what did I just read" instead of "what's going to happen next?"

I want to thank NetGalley, the author and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this publication. In return, I have promised to provide an unbiased review.

Camp zero was a thought provoking, intriguing book. Certainly an appropriate topic for todays world. I’m not usually interested in apocalyptic books but this one pulled me in. The book is not for everyone and I did find myself confused a few times while reading. However, the reader is left with hope after finishing the book.

Camp Zero is an excellent novel, filled with enough intrigue to keep you guessing. Who are the main players? What do they know? How do the various pieces fit? I was most interested in White Alice and how this band of women created a life for themselves in a northern outpost, but could not foresee how they were connected to the northern towns. Dealing with climate disaster, this dystopian tale focuses less on the environment and more on the people who wish to exploit no matter the cost. What happens in a world when everything, and everyone, can be expendable?

I think I misunderstood the genre of this book, which really changed how I felt about it. I expected an exciting page turner of a mystery set in a dystopia future in Northern Canada. Instead, I got more of a character study of people. I realized this when I got about 70% through and I still wasn't sure what the plot was of the book. There are a lot of characters and it took up so much of the book just telling their backstory. Meanwhile some of the more potentially interesting characters in the book, I feel like I barely knew.
Overall, I think there are people who will love this book for it's character driven plot. But I was looking for something very different.
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me a free copy in return for a review.

I loved this exciting dystopian read! I really enjoyed the strong and resilient female characters in this story. The twists took me by surprise. The book ends on a hopeful note.

This thought-provoking and intriguing read had me hooked from the beginning, with its portrayal of a world utterly changed by rising temperatures and extreme weather conditions. As a result, the greedy powerbrokers and plunderers of earth's riches turn their sights to Canada's northern regions—the only place in North America where cold temperatures make life bearable and fresh water, ice and snow actually exist. Also the only place still hiding precious mineral reserves under the permafrost.
The story follows Rose, a paid escort/prostitute who travels north from The Floating City (in Boston Harbour), to a bleak camp in Northern Alberta's old oil patch where a reclusive architect is supposedly building an idyllic campus dedicated to finding ways to live in harmony with nature. Rose's new life is reminiscent of The Handmaiden's Tale in that she's there simply to "service" the project's management who subscribe to a strongly patriarchal version of life. Another story strand follows Grant, an idealistic young academic, eager to escape his power-magnate father and forge his own future path. But the most fascinating story is of "White Alice" an all-female research group of scientists sent to the far north to monitor climate change. Instead they gradually discover the real reason why they've been sent there.
The author paints a vision of a future world that is entirely possible, and poses the question that even when earth's resources are dwindling and we are on the brink of potential disaster, how far will power-hungry men go to continue to amass personal wealth even when the consequences might be the destruction of humanity and possibly our world and how can women band together and work in harmony to prevent them?

Camp zero was one of my most highly anticipated books this year and I was SO excited to receive an ebook ARC copy to review. Climate fiction is usually a slam dunk for me, and the comparisons to Station Eleven, one of my all time favorites, was icing on the cake. Unfortunately, I had the hardest time getting into this one. The storylines were so disconnected from one another and I just wasn't invested enough to keep reading to find out if and how they ultimately come together. I ended up DNFing this one as it just didn't work for me

This book is not my typical choice of genre, but I really liked it.

What a thrill to escape to the barren north in 2049, and also, I really hope that’s not what life is like in a couple of short decades.

I would say this book was good. I enjoyed the was the three perspectives intermingled. The ending felt rushed though and I would have liked a little more explanation.

An ARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

CAMP ZERO was a bleak, unflinching tale of a not so distant (and possible) future. One where the climate has permanently shifted, oil is outlawed (at least for the underprivileged) and technology is our only surviving link to what’s left of humanity.

At times the sheer amount of narrators and storylines felt overwhelming, however it was very satisfying to see them all link together at the end.

Our discussion group mentioned how much we would love to read more from this “world” (particularly the White Alice storyline!) and I completely agree. Although I do love a good ambiguous ending, I would 💯 pick up a sequel if one was written!

I had really high hopes for this book, but ended up disappointed. I couldn't immerse myself in the world and didn't really feel any connection to it. Ended up DNFing about halfway through.

In Camp Zero, author Michelle Min Sterling brings together an unusual combination of characters to create an intriguing and layered story. Camp Zero is mainly set in Dominion Lake, a former oil town in Alberta, Canada, around the end of 2049 and into 2050. A series of climate disasters, and the ongoing heating of the planet, have made it clear by this time that climate change is real. Oil has been banned, and people cope with the grim new reality as best they can. Not surprisingly, those with financial resources are able to position themselves better than those without. Many of the wealthy live in “Floating Cities,” where they ride out some of the worst effects.

The premise of Camp Zero is that a man named Meyer is trying to establish a campus that will become a future haven for American “nation dodgers” on Canadian soil. The cooler climate and the availability of natural resources are the main draws of the camp’s location in northern Alberta.

Camp Zero’s story unfolds through the perspective of three characters: a woman named Rose, a young man named Grant, and an unnamed female character working as part of an all-woman team staffing a former radar station. Rose lives in an abandoned mall, where she works as one of a group of “hostesses” called the “Blooms.” The Blooms serve as emotional and physical companions for the male leadership and management staff at the camp. After being recruited as an instructor at the camp, Grant becomes part of a men’s enclave located at a former warehouse. A two-day snowmobile trip away from Dominion Lake is a cadre of women stationed at a former Cold War outpost, now a climate research station. The women refer to their station as “White Alice,” which was the code name for a communications system established by the U.S. and Canadian Air Forces in the 1950s.

As the story progresses, flashbacks provide a better understanding of multiple motivations and factors at play under the surface. Tension heightens as we learn more about the camp and the forces that led to its creation. What’s really going on here? is a question that becomes more and more compelling as one goes deeper into the book.

As someone who believes in the importance of good stewardship of our planet, I found Camp Zero resonant. Climate change deniers might find it less compelling. Camp Zero makes several references to the role of men in destroying the planet. Depending on whether one interprets this as "men as in males" or "men as in humans," the flavour I got (perhaps incorrectly) was more the former than the latter. While it may be true that males tend to dominate positions of power, including those which influence actions taken or not taken to mitigate climate change, not all men are complicit and not all women are innocent. As I was reading, the frequency with which these comments are made by various characters stood out. Then again, it might be reasonable once the world's been irrevocably changed for people to be angry about it, and look to assign blame.

World-building is one of the features I appreciate in a good dystopian novel. Camp Zero filled the bill, providing unusual settings, circumstances, and characters. In the foreword, the author notes that the idea for Camp Zero was sparked during a trip to visit a cousin who was working as a pipefitter in the boom years in the oil patch. She tried to imagine what an oil town of the future might look like if everything went bust. She also researched sea-steading communities and remote radar stations as groundwork for some of the other venues described in the book. The blend of novel (Floating City) and mundane (abandoned malls and warehouses) settings was part of the appeal for me. For those who enjoy dystopian science fiction, there’s a lot to like in Camp Zero.

*content warnings, not necessarily all-inclusive, which may contain spoilers*
Perhaps not surprisingly for a dystopian novel, Camp Zero contains dark elements, including gun and other violence resulting in death, sometimes inflicted in a cold-blooded manner. There is also unwanted sexual contact. Readers who might find these themes disturbing should be forewarned.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for providing Camp Zero for review consideration. All opinions stated above are my own.

I had really high hopes for this book. I was especially excited to get this copy to read after seeing it was selected as a book of the month and a Jenna’s book club pick but this book did not live up to my expectations. The only word I can really use to describe it would be it was bleak. I disliked basically every character, especially Grant. I will say my favorite chapters were the ones dedicated to White Alice and would have been happy to have their characters explored more. I felt like the relationship between Rose/Nari and the Barber was forced and never fully developed.. I felt like it was only included because the author felt like their should be some romance in the book. Overall I really liked the idea of this book but I felt like it could have been done better. I was disappointed.

This novel is set in a dystopian future where a chosen few live in climate controlled coastal floating cities, everyone else tries to survive on the mainland and humanity is dependent on a implanted device which allows continuous online use. When Rose accepts an offer to work temporarily as an escort at Camp Zero, she sees it as one step towards securing a home for her mother and herself. After all, Camp Zero is located in northern Canada and is at first glance an improvement from her life in the south. Once Rose arrives at the camp, she discovers the reality is much different.

Rose is the primary protagonist, however, two other storylines rise from a young professor as well as a group of militant woman. Secrets and/or hidden motivations are revealed through flashbacks. While seemingly disparate, the storyline lines intertwine as the novel reaches its conclusion. I think it was a decent read because it was atmospheric, interspersed with suspense and I appreciated the intricately woven plot. Based on how the novel ended, I suspect there may be a second novel, however, I’m not sure whether I will pick it up or not.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this ebook for an objective and unbiased review.

I thought this book has a lot of potential. I love dystopian, and or post apocalyptic themes, especially when set in Canada. I’ve been looking for books in the “for fans of Station Eleven” category. The beginning of this book was very promising, but as other reviews, if noted, the midsection dragged a bit, and the ending structure could use some work. Overall good read, I would still recommend it.

I had high hopes for this book based on the description. The beginning was promising, but then nothing much happened in the middle (except for numerous flashbacks) and then the book just...ended. I was also unhappy about the number of plot holes left unaddressed. For example, how did the members of White Alice manage to infiltrate the work camp? They just showed up out of nowhere and they were hired? It seems unbelievable.

It was a good premise that didn't quite work in practice.

Camp Zero by Saadia Faruqi is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel set in a near-future world ravaged by climate change. The story follows the lives of several characters whose fates become intertwined in a remote settlement in northern Canada called Camp Zero. This novel is a must-read for fans of Station Eleven and The Power, and anyone who enjoys immersive and transportive storytelling.

Faruqi's writing is both atmospheric and original, bringing to life a world where summer temperatures are intolerably high, the fossil fuel industry has shut down, and humans are implanted with a ‘Flick’ at birth, which allows them to remain perpetually online. The top echelons of society live in Floating Cities off the coast, while people on the mainland struggle to survive. The world-building in this novel is intricate and nuanced, and the author skillfully imagines a future that is both terrifying and captivating.

The characters in Camp Zero are diverse and complex, and their stories are skillfully entwined. Rose, a hostess in the city's elite club, is offered a job as an escort at Camp Zero in return for a home for her mother and herself. However, once she arrives at the settlement, she discovers that all is not as it seems. The fate of the Camp and its inhabitants is in the hands of a young professor, a group of highly trained women engaged in climate surveillance, and others whose lives become intertwined in unexpected ways.

Camp Zero interrogates the seductive and chilling notion of a utopia, and asks who and what will survive as global tensions rise. Yet, at its heart, it is a novel about love and the ways in which it can sustain us even in the most challenging of circumstances.

Overall, Camp Zero is a beautifully written and utterly gripping novel that will transport readers to a vividly imagined future. It is a timely and important book that offers both a warning and a message of hope. Highly recommended.