Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC of the book and to Sim Kern for organizing the Trans Rights Readathon. I look forward to reading all the other books I have on deck by trans authors and hope this becomes a yearly event!

The Free People's Village is a radically entertaining, enlightening, rollercoaster of a novel. Maddie, the relatable everywoman in the book, meets a rich app developer with some progressive ideals that include creating a music and arts space in a historically poor, black neighborhood in Houston. Renters in the building include Red, a charismatic and irresistible musician, Gestas, a black trans man who is on a version of House Arrest, and a host of other artists, musicians, and idealists. It is through these new friends that Maddie begins to question her own ideas and beliefs.

When developers threaten to take down half the neighborhood to build a new highway (called a hyperway), Maddie and her friends join the mostly black local activists in fighting to keep the neighborhood intact. How far will they go to protect the home they have grown to love, and what would it take to actually help the marginalized people of the neighborhood?

This book takes place in an alternate reality where Al Gore won the 2000 election and made climate change a top priority. What I loved was the thoughtful examination of what that would mean for marginalized groups. We follow Maddie, a white, educated, former-Christian as she learns how racist and classist even progressive policies can be. When gas cars are illegal, who can afford to buy electric vehicles? Who can afford to upgrade their home and get the tax breaks involved? Who can afford to eat meat and dairy when they are heavily taxed? Maddie spends a lot of time getting things wrong, putting her foot in her mouth, and making assumptions about how other people feel and what they want. It was refreshing to watch her struggle to grow and learn. That's really what it takes to understand how other people experience the world and to get outside of our own lives. It's painful, but Maddie does the work to become a better person.

Though Kern is clearly focused on environmentalism and social justice, they don't skimp on the characters. Maddie, Red, Angel, Gestas, Shayna, and others, are deep and well-rounded, wonderful and flawed. It's fascinating to watch the movement grow and to see how people with differing beliefs contribute in their own ways. Kern writes the good and the bad, not glossing over the difficulties or logistics it would take to organize a social justice movement, including food, space, endless planning meetings, and even bathrooms.

I absolutely loved the feeling, while reading, of being part of the movement, seeing the ups and downs, the problems and solutions, and the mental struggles of Maddie and others. She's an imperfect helper and observer, selfish and selfless at the same time, someone who cares deeply and wants to do right but often screws it up.

This book gave me hope for the future, while keeping me grounded in the reality of the trials marginalized people continue to face. It reminded me that progressive beliefs and ideals are generally not enough to make a change. We need radical people and radical ideas to keep the world moving in the right direction.

I give it a 10/10 and recommend it to anyone interested in social justice, science fiction, and environmental issues.

Thank you to NetGalley & Sim for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review!

I found Sim on Tiktok and once they started the trans rights readathon I knew I wanted to give one of their books a try.
A couple disclaimers: 1) Please check all the content warnings before reading this book. 2) This is not my usual genre of book so I will not be giving it a concrete star rating (3 stars is I finished the book). I appreciated it in its artistry but it is not my favorite. I wanted to support a transauthor and get outside my comfort zone.

Like many other people, I agree that Sim Kern's does a bang up job of creating a believable alternate reality. The story tackles topics that we as a society deal with on a daily basis and therefore gives their story a strong base. The imperfections in the MC were also very appealing to this read.

I appreciate the style of writing and how it was a call to action for those involved in the story and those that read it.

I read Free the People’s Village by Sim Kern during the recent Trans Right Readathon and was completely blown away! I cannot express how happy I am to have gotten this ARC opportunity. I am a complete sucker for alternate reality reads and this one tackles a number of significant topics that really hit home for me; racism, police brutality, and climate action all with gusto and with heart. The character builds were superb, their struggles were vital and the overall vibe was totally My Jam! Sim Kern is now on my watch list:)

Maddie spends a lot of her free time at The Lab, the house owned by her boyfriend, and lived in by her bandmates. But when she discovers that the house is set to be torn down in order to widen the hyperway, she decides to do what she can to try to save the house. As she starts going to meetings, she realizes there's a lot more to the neighborhood, to its history and her boyfriend's contribution to its gentrification, than she realized. And one night, when their attempts to save the house and the neighborhood gets a lot of attention, it becomes a tipping point. Suddenly Maddie, a Nice White Lady who'd never given much thought to race, politics, or how much her education lied to her, finds herself at the center of a protest, a movement.

The Free People's Village is set in an alternate 2020-- one in which Gore became president in 2000, and the Democrats have been in power since. But things aren't all perfect in that world--greenwashing is rampant, and there's just as much racism as there is now... and beneath it all, fascism still creeps closer.
And at the center of it all, Maddie is a clumsy ally, someone who tries and often gets it wrong, who does the right things for the wrong reasons, the wrong things for the right reasons, etc. as she tried to make sense of the world and exactly how she fits into her corner of it.

I didn't always like Maddie--sometimes because who she was as a person rubbed me the wrong way, but sometimes because I saw more of myself in her than I would like to admit. The Free People's Village made me examine my own role more critically--where I could do more, why I haven't, and what that means about me. It's definitely not an easy read, but it is an important one, especially for white allies who will see themselves in Maddie and hopefully be receptive to putting themselves in her shoes.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Levine Querido for providing me with an eARC of The Free People's Village in exchange for my honest review!

Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

I'm glad I was able to read this in honor of the Trans Rights Readathon! It presents an endearing ensemble of characters and an intriguing alternate world that's fueled by powerful political layers. It tackles anti-capitalism, anti-racism, police brutality, support for Palestine, environmentalism, and more, all of which I got wrapped up in. The queer rep that Sim Kern spreads throughout the cast is great, too. My only major criticism is that the book can feel like it's lecturing to me. As a reader who generally sides with its politics, I especially didn't think it was necessary to hammer the messaging into my head. It's basically preaching to the choir. If it had been woven a bit more subtly into the narrative, I would have appreciated that.

Overall, I'm rating The Free People's Village 4.25 out of 5 stars. I'll be interested to check out more of Kern's work.

This is the heaviest and most thought-provoking thing I have read so far for the trans rights readathon. As a white cis woman, this has me thinking HARD about my own activism. I'm also coming away with a hefty reading list. To the book itself: I never felt the pace drag, and it was only too fast when I was reading so fast to get to the next page and the next and the next. The characters had so much depth and felt truly real. Texas isn't Missouri, but this story could've easily been set in St. Louis with barely any changes. This could be happening — and has happened! — in my own community. I appreciated that our main character, Maddie, fucked up over and over again, because that's a thing white cis people are destined to do on the journey to unlearn the white supremacist, patriarchal, colonialist bullshit we've been absorbing like oxygen since birth. But I also appreciated that Maddie's friends didn't always just brush off her mistakes — there were consequences, which is also the reality of the thing. Overall, this story of a protest movement working toward a better world through the brightest days and the darkest is going to stick with me for a long time.

Wow yes all of this! I love alternate timelines especially when you can see a few different major changes to our worlds timeline and this could have happened.
Maddie is so relatable with her limited understanding of what she knows and learns quick a lot about herself and about how unfair and f'ed up the system is.
Damn this book demands more from all of us than to just sit and look pretty. It's so scary to stand up to the status quo. But when you don't benefit from it and are being pushed down by it it feels like a noose.
Damn your description of grief made me cry cause I believe this exactly. My Dad was my best friend and I lost him when I was 6 mo pregnant 6 years ago and I still haven't processed it but I feel him in every song and I see 7:11 all the time.
I'm still processing but this book will make you think, even though it's not our universe its still the same rules- different currency. The war is still the same and the same voices are being silenced.
Read this book!
Also, I just love reading Xe/Xim/Xir pronouns in books they send that delicious tickle in my ear, I don't know what it is.

Thank you levinequerido for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

4.5⭐️

While it took me a little bit to get into the story, that may have had to do with me reading it on my phone during lunch breaks and while waiting in lines. Once I actually got into the story in moved fairly quickly, without sacrificing character development for our main character. The story follows a protest movement in a fictionalized US, and and is heartbreaking in how realistic the momentum can be, and the stakes of what you are up against. At the end there is a metaphor that radical movements are like mycelium underground, and large protests are just the mushrooms appearing for a short while, but when they disappear, the mycelium continue to grow.

The story takes place in an alternate universe where Al Gore won the presidential election. He set forth a war on climate that unfortunately only made the low-income, black communities suffer.

I’m not a big fan of sci-fi books but I’m really happy that I read this one. It made me rethink things about my life & the world we live in.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for an ARC of this book.

4.5 stars rounded up: When the author inspired everyone to read Trans books for the #transrightsreadathon, I wanted to participate. I love Sim's content on TikTok and knew they were an author (and journalist), but hadn't read any of their books. They put their to-be-published (Sept 2023) novel up on NetGalley for the Readathon and I jumped at the chance to give their writing a try. I loved it and will definitely be reading their other novels! The commentary on climate change, racism, identity, religion, activism, anarchy, white savior-ism, and gentrification in this novel is absolutely outstanding and incredibly digestible. Sim has a knack for saying an awful lot in very few sentences; I found myself highlighting a lot of the book. The characters are really well-developed, complex, and highly imperfect. As a Catholic-raised (but now agnostic) white woman, I very much identified with and appreciated the main character Maddie. I think the only reason this isn't a full 5-star read, however, is because the character Red fell flat for me...I just didn't understand Maddie's love for Red. But really, there was a large cast of characters and I pretty much loved everyone else (or hated them with the same amount of vigor).

As good as this novel is, it is not an easy read. Check content warnings before diving in; there are a lot of really difficult topics covered. And despite it being an alternate timeline where Al Gore won the election and the States entered into a War on Climate instead of a War on Terror, the country operates exactly the same way it always has. History is doomed to repeat itself until there is a true revolution. There are some slivers of hope in the book, but this was a VERY heavy read given the current state of the US (and a lot of the world). Alongside the doom and gloom, though, is definitely a little motivation to be part of the revolution.

3⭐️

In a world where Gore won the 2000 election instead of Bush, the war against climate change is in full swing 20 years later. Carbon credits are required as tax for things like beef, dairy and electricity, only the rich have cars, the police use drones and robot dogs to track people and there’s a war over a fire in the Amazon. But just like our reality, people of color, LGBTQIA people, and the impoverished are disproportionately affected by laws and police violence.

Maddie Ryan is a sheltered girl. She grew up religious and married way too young to a man that used the Bible to shame her. Newly divorced and wanting something different, she meets Red and his roommate Gestas and they show her the world of the resistance. They become part of “The Free People’s Village,” and attempt to form an anti-capitalist society while fighting back against an overpowered government while searching for justice.

I really liked the butterfly effect aspect of this story. If Al Gore had won the election and the US focused on climate change rather than the War on Terror, how different would our world be now? I liked how even with all the changes were made, racism and classism is still rampant. There are a lot of tongue and cheek events that almost break the fourth wall; the republican candidate winning when no one thought the country was that racist, the violence and disproportionate incarceration of people of color, and an animal based virus threatening to spread across the nation.

There is a part in the book where Red tells Maddie not to make everything about her and that’s truly a summary of every action Maddie takes. She’s upset that people think she’s gentrifying the neighborhood which inspires her action but it all comes across very disingenuous. She started all this to impress Red. Every things she did was either to impress Red or to relieve her of her white guilt. At times she clearly doesn’t understand her privilege and just wants the people who are hurt by these injustices to tell her she did good. She was not a sympathetic character and it took way too long for her to have any character development.

Thank you NetGalley and Levine Querido for providing this ARC to me!

This book was a great read. It features incredibly complex characters experiencing very real issues. Its a winding story that was engaging. The way it discussed things was very well done. While I wish that a few people had been held more accountable it was accurate to the character that they weren't. The main character is frustrating in many ways but I can't imagine a different main character for this book. She makes perfect sense and frustrations aside I'm on her side. It was really enjoyable to have that complexity in her character. You root for her, feel for her, and sometimes wanna shake some sense into her.

I received this book as a free arc through Netgalley. All views are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley, publisher Levine Querido, & author Sim Kern for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Sim Kern’s, The Free People’s Village is the first climate fiction coming-of-age story I've read. I found them through TikTok and the Trans Rights Readathon this month. The author is a climate fiction writer and journalist, which lends to their intersection of climate, identity, and social justice.

The story reveals an alternative timeline where Al Gore won his presidential bid in the 2000 election and proclaimed a War on Climate Change. The war, even after twenty years, has not benefited all citizens equitably. Instead, it has allowed the affluent, white neighborhoods of the suburbs to be a lush environment of performative climate ‘activism.’ At the same time, lower-income black, brown, and indigenous communities in the cities pay a heavy carbon tax for every part of their lives.

The main character, Maddie Ryan, is a teacher at a mostly Black high school in Houston, Texas, during the day and a guitarist with her queer punk band, Bunny Bloodlust, during her off hours. Maddie finds herself amid a Black-led movement called to protect the neighborhood she works and plays in called the Eighth Ward.

Maddie’s reasons for her activism change as she matures in her different connections and interactions with folx in the Eighth Ward and what becomes the Free People's Village. As a white female presenting individual, Maggie struggles with her identity and privilege, which influences how she interacts with her shame and guilt.

You will meet incredibly complex people through Maddies POV, like her bandmate & person, Red. Red’s anarchist friend Gestas and Red’s brother Angel. Shayna, the leader of the movement. Vida and Peter activists, Nimo and Lorenzo. These relationships are significant catalysts in Maddie’s finding her identity and social justice compass.

I enjoyed every minute of reading this story and truly believe that we need more stories like Sim Kerns. These are important to help us realize the part to play in overcoming climate change, standing up & defending social and economic justice for black, brown, and indigenous people, and bringing real and equitable change for marginalized folx. I highly recommend The Free People's Village!

I read an eARC of The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern. Thank you, NetGalley and Levine Querido publishing.

The book takes place in an alternate timeline to our own where Al Gore won and declared War on Climate Change. While this has led to some positives in the world overall, which is explored later within the book, it also explores how it’s always those most disenfranchised, especially those with darker skin, that end up suffering the most by the laws that were put in place, and the actions taken to “make the world more environmentally sound.”

The book takes place from the third-person perspective of English teacher Maddie Ryan who is an awkward duck of a person with horrible taste in romantic partners, and rhythm guitarist of Bunny Bloodlust by night. She starts the girlfriend of Fish, the man who owns “The Lab” the place where they play their gigs and where the other band members live in.

She already knows that she never really loved Fish, she mostly liked the attention he gave him, especially after the mental abuse she suffered under her overly religious first husband. But now she sees him drinking and acting, if not as horribly, starting to be as horrible as her ex-husband, and this is compounded when she finds a letter that says that “The Lab” is to be demolished in order to make way for an electromagnetic hyperway.

Even as Fish is complaining that he needs sleep, Maddie gets everyone from “The Lab” together to talk about what they could do, but all that is decided is that she, and maybe one other member, will go to an organization meeting to fight for all of the 8th Ward. When she does go, she’s the only white person, and she acts almost as bad as I do when I’m forced to interact with any group of people.

This is a story of a young woman realizing her place in the world. The parts that she plays in all of this. How she tries to change, how she reflects on how she can help, and how she makes everyone laugh and cringe around her.

And how her taste in romantic problems is the worst.

The book is fascinating, and I found myself writing down names to look up, and things to read by myself. I loved them all. This is a great book to read and I love the conversations that can start with this.

I fell in love with this book right from the start! I love dystopian/sci-fi so this was right up my alley and Sim did not disappoint! The characters had so much heart and depth to them. The book was exhilarating, heartbreaking, and forced me to look closer at my own privilege and the real world politics that we currently live with, even through this "What If" lens. I can't wait to check out more of their books!

I don’t exactly know how to describe how I feel after finishing this book. It felt… chewy? Like a lot to sit and digest in the best way possible. So many feelings and concepts to think about. Discusses so much-race, white saviorism, gender, sexuality, climate change, gentrification and more I missed I’m sure.

Revolutionary.

The main character Maddie was so relatable as she goes from hyper religious to in the thick of an anarchistic revolution- with the best characters in her circle. All of the other characters were written so well I felt like I was friends with everyone too.

Definitely check cw, everything was handled with care but some things could be especially triggering to some readers.

Thanks to NetGalley and Levine Querido and Sim Kern for an eARC.

Are you ready to join the Revolution?

I'll admit, I had no idea what to expect going into reading The Free People's Village. I have been following Sim Kern on TikTok for a while and knew that I loved their content. When they started organizing the Trans Rights Readathon, I wanted to participate in any way I could, and I was excited when I was approved to get an ARC copy of their book through Net Galley.

This story starts off in an alternate reality. Al Gore won the election in 2000, and he kicked off a War on Climate Change.

How could the world be different in 2020 (when most of this story takes place) and beyond, if that one single historical election had gone a different way?

{This review will have some spoilers}

I highly recommend reading up on Content Warnings before reading this book. I'll list the main triggers I noticed, but I may have missed some.
Content Warning: Addiction, Alcoholism, Assault, Child Abuse, Death, Drug Use, Emotional Abuse, Police Brutality, Rape, Religious Trauma, Sexual Assault, Suicide, Suicidal Ideation.
Some of these topics are mentioned or talked about in the story in the past tense, but others are handled in more detail. The rape is not discussed in detail. I'll admit, I generally avoid any story that has rape in it, but I really felt that this was handled well, and is only mentioned in the briefest way possible.

First, I absolutely loved Maddie (the main character and narrator of this book). She felt so intensely relatable to me. From the very first moment when she begins questioning her sexuality and hearing a Catholic Nun chiding her in her head, I knew I was going to love her. Maddie starts out this story as a woman just out of a toxic marriage with an emotionally abusive extremely religious Catholic husband. She is on a journey to find herself. She has left the Catholic church and is still working through the religious trauma that left behind.

Throughout the book, I found her to be such an awesome main character/narrator, probably because I could personally deeply relate to her. As an Ex-evangelical, I can absolutely relate to that voice in my head critiquing every single choice I make that doesn't line up with the way I was raised to behave. As the story progresses, we get to see her entire journey from being a "hetero" cis woman, seemingly unaware of her privilege and racism. We get to join the journey with her as she learns and grows, and joins the movement to change the world.

I have a soft spot for main characters who aren't perfect. And Maddie definitely isn't. We get to see her doubt herself, make mistakes, and waver along the journey. I loved that she is open to learning and growing, but she doesn't figure everything out right away.

Sim Kern does an amazing job of creating this alternate reality in breathtakingly beautiful detail. I've read so many books where I couldn't picture the characters or the scenes because there wasn't enough description provided. But somehow they found a way to give just the right amount of detail here and there to make me feel like I was in the moment. I feel like I know Maddie, I've hung out with the band. I can picture exactly who Fish is, I can understand Red. I could learn about radical theory from Gestas. And those are only a few of the characters in this story. Each person is introduced with snapshots of detail bringing them to life on the page. I've spent the last two days in the Free People Village. Watching the chaos, cheering for the movement. This book is a work of fiction, but every moment of it felt real. Probably because every aspect of this story touches on the very real reality we live in. It tackles topics like racism, police brutality, the carceral system, prison abolition, and climate change in ways that make sense for the reality the characters are living in while also tying into the world we are in today. They found ways to discuss very serious and important topics that felt accessible and easy to follow even if you haven't read all the best leftist/anarchist/ communist works out there (which I haven't, although I do have several new books on my reading list now).

I thought I would probably sit down and have fun reading this book and then move on to another book and set this one aside. But after reading the Free People's Village, I know I can't do that. This is the kind of book I want to buy copies of and pass out to my friends. I want to sit and discuss the story, and then I want to actually DO something. Because changing the world is hard and complicated, but I at least need to try.

This book absolutely hit all the feels, and I'll admit I was crying by the time I finished reading it. It felt like a call to action and a reminder that revolutions do not take place overnight. Each movement builds on the ones that have come before it. We can all push for a better world. Change doesn't come easily, but we can choose to take steps toward the future we want.

If you're ready to join the revolution, pick up this book. If you're not, read it anyway, it might just change you in ways you wouldn't expect.

I have a lot of feelings about this book. Sorry?

There’s a famous quote by César A. Cruz that can best sum up how this book made me feel. “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

Critiques: I feel like the dialogue in this book is awkward at times. Like, a lot of my friends are very similar to the characters in these books, but we just don’t speak this way. I’m essentially the narrators age and occupation too. I couldn’t tell if that was a purposeful choice, since it’s a recollection.

I also feel like some of the trauma told in this work isn’t necessarily the authors to tell? but I also feel like it’s unavoidable. A lot of it is theirs of course, though! And the book brings up great points. Idk. I am conflicted on this note. I don’t think it’s harmful or anything, but it just made me question how authors can and should write marginalized identities outside of our own. (Carefully, of course)!

Compliments: this was an extremely thought provoking novel. It really made me grapple with subjects I hadn’t before.

Like, why do we teach To Kill a Mockingbird to children? I know that sounds stupid, but I genuinely never considered that it might just be exactly what everything else is… propaganda.

It also made me consider what political system I’d prefer, and what I think would be the best thing for the USA. I’ve always considered myself some sort of leftist, but this story made me question whether that’s true. Could I do what these characters did? I think if I did, I would be more of a Shayna, and not at all a Red, or a Gestas. I might even be a Maddie. And is that okay? Do I want to be fearful, careful? I stayed up all night pondering these.

It was interesting to see socialism v. communism v. anarchy v. fascism all come out to play and work both for and against one another, and I liked that I’m still not sure what the authors preference is, though it’s clear they aren’t a fan of neoliberalism or Catholicism! (LOL)

I don’t know who this book is for. I don’t know who would enjoy it, but I think most would be intrigued by it, and many would learn something. I am glad I read it! And I’m happy about the Trans Rights Readathon.

It was nice to branch out and try a (sort of) new genre. I read books by trans authors, and I read sci-fi, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a queer political dystopian punk environmental sci-fi before.

Overall, I’d describe this book as an addicting, thought provoking piece of literature that ripped my heart out of my chest. Oof, that ending. Thank you for the ARC!