In the midst of despair there comes hope. This novel primarily deals with the strength of will of people struggling with the results of perhaps war or climate change many centuries earlier. Family is the center of lives and rulers fight for control of the people. The descriptions of setting are amazingly poetic and easily pictured. The storyline could easily be seen as the future result of our current political and environmental paths.

Thanks to NetGalley and Viking Press for the ARC to read and review.

Once I focused fully on the wonderful characters and stopped trying to place this in a time frame (is it post apocalyptic, dystopian, prehistory?), I was caught up in this big novel about family and survival. Kushim, Maren, and Leerit find themselves alone in a harsh environment without food when their parents do not return from a trip. Leerit decides they must find their auntie and the rest of their people, who have moved from the area and so they set off on a life changing trek. Their mother Lilah has been captured and taken to a place where she washes the wool garments made from the fleeces of sheep owned by Cyrus who wants to be a scholar and who cares for another man. The lives and fates of these four will be linked even as they all struggle to live and to escape their circumstances. Know that this is slow in spots (it sags a bit in the middle) but that while it's clearly a cautionary tale about climate change, it never becomes polemic. It's the characters that soar here- and you'll find yourself rooting for them. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. An excellent read.

Life is a circle. What comes around, goes around. We always hope for things to get better, but we humans keep committing the sins of the past, and hence the same results. When will we learn?
This book is bleak, but a very harsh truth that we all must face.
Very well written and I don't mean to turn anyone away from the book with the descriptions of truth that is hard to swallow. There is always hope, it's just that many humans tend to not think about things until it is way too late.
Read and enjoy, and come to your own conclusions, and then do something about it.

With more than seven billion people on this teeming planet, it’s hard to imagine the times when the earth’s population was much smaller. In the afterword of his new novel, The Ancients, John Larison writes that he took his inspiration from a period in our species’ history about 195,000 years ago. Rapid climate change pushed humanity to a small corner of what is now South Africa, where they weathered desertification until more favorable conditions returned. The handful of primary characters in this novel are pushed to and fro by rising sands and tides, declining schools of fish and herds of elk, and worse in a world that might be a future version of our own.

The Ancients opens with two children whose parents have disappeared. This would be distressing enough if it weren’t for the fact that the only adult in the vicinity is their older sister. The village that used to be full of friends and family left a few years earlier to follow the elk herds that sustained them. The children—Maren and Kushim, and older sister Leerit—stayed behind because their parents told them that the fish and elk would come back. When their parents fail to return the next day, the trio set off after the village. Meanwhile, chapters that follow Lilah reveal what happened to the children’s parents. Their father was murdered by slavers and Lilah shipped to a surprisingly large city somewhere to the south. Another protagonist, Cyrus, finds himself struggling to step into his deceased father’s shoes and burdened by an impossible task laid on him by the emperor of the sprawling city and its withering territory.

Each of these perspectives shows us the different pressures an increasingly inhospitable landscape puts on the people who try to live there. The children struggle to find food, water, and shelter as they follow what they hope is the village’s route to the elk herds. Disaster strikes when an equally hungry and desperate bear attacks. Lilah is enslaved by people who haven’t quite realized that their current way of life isn’t sustainable anymore. Only people like Lilah—slaves and poorly paid laborers—know that it’s all going to end in starvation or revolution (or both). Cyrus is one of the people who, at the beginning of the book, has no idea how bad things are until he steps out of his privileged upbringing and really see what life is like for the lower classes.

Larison takes his time bringing these characters together. The slow burn of the plot only starts to speed up towards the end but I’m glad that this story takes its time. As I read about Leerit, Maren, and Kushim, I got a strong sense of what it might mean to live so close to the earth that people would have to follow their prey in order to live another season. Lilah and Cyrus’s chapters aren’t any less stressful. The stresses of living in a big city are different but even these characters start to wonder where their next meal is coming from.

There are hints that the world these characters inhabit is some version of our own. Cyrus comments on the plastic beads in his mother’s tiaras and the plastic mines in the hills and mountains around the unnamed city. Later, he is shown a battered document that leads him to question the empire’s origin myth. Kushim and his sisters discover a metal structure that made me think of the reentry capsules that astronauts return to Earth in. The world wasn’t always as harsh as it is in The Ancients, though none of the characters have any idea of what life was like before or what might’ve happened to change the environment so drastically. Readers who are more au fait with climate change will have more than a few guesses. The Ancients manages to avoid falling into the trap of preachiness and even, to my surprise, offers a bit of hope that humanity might figure out a way to band together to survive the worst the weather can throw at us.

Wow!! This was a beautiful book. The writer paints out the environment so well I couldn’t help but imagining it all in my head, and the characters are so likable you can’t put the book down. However, it is a little slow and it is not a book you can fly though. I think there is a lot to understand here, this book has depth.

This book contains many perspectives that begin with 3 children from a small village. They are searching for their eldest sister as some terrible fate has befallen their parents. From this point on, their quest to find more kin begins. Originally I found that I enjoyed the lyrical way story took shape. Unfortunately this tale became harder to follow, and became less interesting, as the perspectives jumped around. I found myself disinterested after the third or fourth point of view was added. This book lacked in the magic that sets up fantastic books.

A fascinating mental exercise - but for some reason, it never caught on with me. This is a very well written book, but perhaps I've grown tired of the "post-apocalypse" sort of fiction this falls into. Even with the barest glimmer of hope (and the author's fascinating afterward regarding the dawn of humanity), there's so much here that makes for bleak reading. This is set long long after a climate disaster event/process (it is so far in the past that it makes no difference - there is little to no memory of our civilization) and tells three interwoven stories: a mother taken as a slave, her children left behind...trying to survive a drought, and the young aristocrat who is struggling with bending to the role expected of him. Of the three stories (which all intersect with each other), that of Cyrus the aristocrat most appealed to me. Indeed...I think I might have enjoyed it with less of the children survivors, though I imagine that "breaks" the novel in a bunch of ways.

That said, the historian in the back of my mind thinks this is a fascinating starting point for discussing the idea of cyclical history - that the same events repeat (or maybe the better word would be: remix) and that even in dark times, humanity finds a way. I think this will appeal to a wide range of genre readers and will show up on some best of the year lists., even if it won't show up on mine. A solid 3.75 (rounded to 4 elsewhere).

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Viking for the advance reader copy of this novel. My opinions are entirely my own and I was not renumerated for them.

The Ancients begins with a dilemma: a young boy and girl are orphaned, so they seek help from their elder sister, who has been surviving on her own up the coast. There is little to no food, and the shifting landscape is encroaching on their homes. Their only option is to search out the relatives who stayed in their ancestral homeland. The narrator then shifts over to a coastal town, where the wealthy consume and are consumed by their privilege. The lower classes subsist on very little; the monarch is brutal towards any who push against the status quo. One aristocrat, who must take over the title after his father’s untimely demise, must fit into a very tight mold, and there are parts of him that just won’t conform. Then we learn that the mother of the children survived, but was captured by pirates. The story follows each character or set of characters through arduous physical and mental journeys so that they eventually touch. Over the course of these journeys, the reader encounters landmarks: derelict structures that in our current age convey electricity or oil or water, but for the characters in the novel, represent a mysterious ancient past.

When I picked up The Ancients, I was hoping to see more links to the past. What I got instead was a return visit to problems that have plagued every civilization since the dawn of civilization: struggle for survival, struggle for power and wealth, struggle to control resources. The more I thought about what I had read, my mind connected it to the classic poem “Ozymandias” and the final scene from Planet of the Apes: we are so-far distanced from our history that we fail to recognize the recurring themes.

I highly recommend this novel as a jump off point for discussion around history repeating itself. While the events involving the characters don’t necessarily revolve around the ancients, the ancients certainly revolve around the characters, blind and mute in their wasting away.

Thank you to Penguin Group Viking and NetGalley for access to the ARC. Opinions stated herein are my own; I don’t receive any remuneration for my review.

This is the story of a young boy & his older sisters, their mother (separated from her family), & a young scholar who is trying to save his family's business and position of privilege. In a sweeping story of these 3 groups, with a crumbling empire and the fight for humanity. This is a book that will grab you and pull you in.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

Wow. It was so much more than I expected.

A great read. Recommend.

Dystopian lit has become such a crowded field (I wonder why). Larison's novel is compelling, utterly original and an all-too-realistic dystopia. Incredibly memorable characters, beautiful settings, and nuggets of insight about contemporary society. Well worth a read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you to Viking and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

This saga of survival takes place in a climate-damaged world, set in an indeterminate time and place. It could be the distant past; it could be the post-apocalyptic future. A few lines eventually do place it in time, but that is almost incidental, as this is a mythic story of cultures destroyed, rebuilt, in conflict and in renewal.

Two major societies have endured for countless years. Their histories and social norms are richly described: the Coastal villagers, whose creation story begins with the Sea, whom they worship in a matrilineal community. Theirs is a simple existence, rich with stories, songs and worship, but basic in material goods and learning. They are seen as “primitives” by the technologically advanced hilltop dwellers, whose creation story begins with the Sun, whom they worship in their patrilineal society. This “civilized” culture is replete with archives and armies, theaters and hospitals, and the manufacture of all kinds of quality goods. The hard work is done by stolen “primitives,” who work as slave laborers.

There are many vivid characters in each culture, and their situations are described in powerful, often short, statements. Their narratives interweave, moving the plot along for all. Relationships are based on family, forbidden love, self-interest, and transactions at different levels. However, at all levels children are valued, and the efforts to care for them are quite moving.

The book also is rich with imagery – crows and sand and floods abound; an Ark is being built to take the “civilized” society across the flat ocean to a green and fertile land – and there is a thought-provoking exploration of history, who records it and how it is used.

An absorbing and enjoyable read, this book raises many issues about inter-racial and cross-cultural relationships, as well as humans’ responsibility to the earth and to each other. It does not resolve them all, and because of that it would be a fine book group choice.

I found this incredibly boring, reductive, cynical, and plodding. It was a relief to be done reading it.

This book sounded like something I'd enjoy reading, but unfortunately, I had a hard time being very invested in it. I stuck with it until the end because I was curious if we'd ever find out for sure what the people's history was that we were learning about. I was disappointed that that history is never explained and the ending seemed oddly preachy to me but perhaps I misunderstood what the author was saying.

One of the best books I have read all year! I couldn't put this down. It keeps you on your toes and is very well written. I loved this!

The Ancients is a dystopian story of a society which is close to collapse. Food is scarce; grass has mostly been lost to sand, the elk is the only major huntable animal, and the technology does not exist to properly store food through the winter. Some inhabitants have been building a giant ark, hoping that they can save civilization by finding a more habitable locale. The trouble is, they are not sure if there even is a more habitable locale, or if they are the only people remaining on earth.

Larison's description of the life of these people is deliberately vague. We never learn what happened to cause the current conditions or how long they have been living like this. There are a few tantalizing clues: a sign is uncovered which refers to an American city, and the city's library contains scrolls which seem to refer to ancient times when things were different. These clues, however, are never referred to again, which makes me wonder why they were even included. I had a hard time figuring out the details of these peoples' existence - where they might be located, for example, and an overarching theme for their existence. The publisher's information seems to indicate that this is a story about climate change, but there is little indication of this in the narrative. We don't know if human-made or natural climate change caused their conditions, or whether or not it is reversible. Given that, I'm not sure this is intended as a cautionary tale.

Another aspect of the story which was confusing to me was the caste system. Three levels seemed to exist: the lowest caste which were nomadic, a workers class in the city, and a ruling class. They referred to each other by names that didn't seem consistent - I wasn't sure, for example, if when one group referred to "Barbarians" and another group referred to "Left Coasters" they were talking about the same people. It certainly didn't give me any more information with which to understand their situation.

It seems to me that the key to a good dystopian novel is creating a world where the reader knows more than the inhabitants do. That way, their actions and their fate can be seen in context. I didn't get that in this book.

Thanks to Penguin Group and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

John Larison’s “The Ancients” is a richly imagined, very well-written post-apocalyptic novel set on Earth at a time far in the future. While I admired much of it, and especially Mr. Larison's world-building and descriptive powers, ultimately, I did not enjoy the tale as much as I had hoped I would.

The story begins with two teen sisters and a younger brother living in an otherwise empty village by the sea. Their mother and father have just disappeared and may be dead. The youths venture inland to find their aunt who, months ago, led the rest of the villagers over the mountains, seeking a better life, Facing all kinds of danger and hardship, the sisters and brother eventually become separated.

Their mother, in fact, is not dead. Instead, she has been kidnapped aboard a ship by slavers who transport her to a dying, sand-blown city that worships the sun and an emperor who is building an ark to transport some of the more favored population across the sea to a new paradise.

Much of the story is about what this mother and her children experience as they try to find their way back to each other. The remainder centers on Cyrus, a gay, city-dwelling scholar compelled to run his deceased father’s wool business and provide enough wool to the Emperor to secure a place for himself and his loved ones on the ark.

Author John Larison never does tell us exactly where (or when) we are, only that, as the result of certain cataclysmic events, this future world is very, very different from our own. In many ways, it’s far less advanced. There’s no machinery, much less steam, fossil fuel, or nuclear power. Slaves (euphemistically referred to as “the indentured”) perform the manual labor. Scrolls take the place of books. There are no firearms; only knives, spears, bows, and arrows. Indeed, this no-name metropolis seems more like a city from our past (perhaps as far back as the European Renaissance or maybe even ancient Egypt, Greece, or Rome) than anything we know.

Yet, despite these differences, humanity still experiences many of the problems that affect our times: mistrust between regions and peoples, armed conflicts, income equality, poverty, ecological disaster, dwindling resources, and intolerance of homosexuality, to mention a few.

Although I admired all the imagination, world-building, and fine prose that went into this novel, I thought it had flaws. For example, I had trouble engaging with the characters. While Mr. Larison is successful at placing them in dire circumstances or situations of internal and external conflict, he is less so at letting us, the readers, really get to know or identify with them. And there are many of them to keep straight as the novel shifts amongst three storylines that eventually merge into one.

I also had trouble with the length and pacing of the novel. I thought it dragged in places and that it seemed about ¼ to 1/3 longer than necessary.

Finally, there was a vagueness and ambiguity to the story that I found problematic. As mentioned above, we never really know how many years (or millennia) into the future we are, or exactly what happened to our world. While there are references to lead us to believe that we’re somewhere on the North American continent, we’re never quite sure where. There are also references to particular groups, like Barbarians and “Left-Coasters” and “Right-Coasters,” but no real definition as to who and what they are or want. To be fair, it’s entirely possible that other readers will find this to be one of the novel’s strengths and enjoy imagining these specifics for themselves.

So, a book with lots of strengths but, for me, some weaknesses too--which is why I'm giving it 3.75 stars rounded up to 4.

My thanks to NetGalley, author John Larison, and publisher Penguin Group Viking for providing me with a complimentary ARC. All of the foregoing is my independent opinion.

Distant future climate fiction. The writing is clear and straightforward in a way that makes the whole novel feel like a fable, which is fitting. The author’s intentions are effective: what is it like to imagine a distant future for humanity, long after our current climate crisis (and in some ways into the next one). I wished that the author had explored the differences between that future world and our own more deeply. The world-building elements were interesting in their incongruity (some a return to the past, others clearly futuristic) and I would have liked to see more exploration of them. Some of the interesting world-building elements: mined plastic as a precious gem, bronze-age technology (i.e.: bronze), religious worship of natural elements like sand, the sun, the sea. A deeply entrenched caste/class system in the one city-state we see. A lack of knowledge of ancient history (of our current world, past civilizations). There was some exploration of ecosystems and animals but not a lot. I would have loved more of all of this world building.

Overall this was a very enjoyable read, which I would recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin/Viking for the advanced epub in exchange for a review.

The Ancients is a dystopian novel that imagines society taken back to a historic level. There are references to bronze spears for example. Warmth is down to building fires. This isn’t Mad Max, it’s more Dark Ages.
There are multiple storylines that give the reader different viewpoints on the current hardships. In the first storyline, three children, ranging in age from an 18 year old girl to a young boy, head out from their sea coast home towards the mountains after their parents disappear. They are seemingly all alone with no others to rely on as the rest of the village left earlier looking for better food sources.
Meanwhile, their mother has been taken captive by a marauding boat and their father killed.
And a young man, obviously upper caste, awaits the death of his father. In each, drought, the encroaching sand and an inability to find sustenance are constant problems. The author has also developed religious beliefs and stories to go with the different groups, right down to a story of virgin birth. I have to give him credit for his world building. This is a world that has returned to the haves and the have nots. There’s no middle class, its slaves/indentured or elites or nomads/primitives.
This book didn’t immediately grab me. I had loved Whiskey When We’re Dry, so I stuck with it. And stuck with it. For some reason, I struggled to get invested with any of the characters. Yes, their plights were horrific. But something about this book just felt dry. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I am in the minority with this one, so please check out other reviews.
My thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books for an advance copy of this book.

So we have been here before?
Yes, child, this has all happened before, and like the last time, we wil learn again to thrive.
from The Ancients by John Larison

The Ancients imagines a far future world that seems all too familiar, a place we have read about in ancient history, and more unsettling, it is too much like the world we live in.

The Emperor demands endlessly greater tribute, depleting the land in the endeavor to meet his demand. The ‘barbarians’ with bronze weapons capture the ‘heathen’ for slave labor while claiming to better their lives–at least they are fed. Coastal tribal groups distrust each other over differences in culture.

In a lifetime, the fishing folk have seen the dunes overtake the land, the fish disappear. Rather than starve, an entire village leaves for the mountains to follow the elk. One family remained behind. A barbarian ship captures the mother to be a slave, the father drowning in the sea, leaving their three children alone to fend for themselves.

The oldest girl leads her siblings up the mountain to join the villagers. Tragedy strikes, separating the three. The oldest girl becomes a warrior rising up against the barbarians. The middle child bonds with sheep herders who take her in. The boy is sent to the barbarian city to be healed. Their stories reveal an entire world in crisis.

Cyrus, a master in the city, must increase his wool tribute. He has been a scholar until his father’s death. He is forced to borrow money from a powerful general. The man he loves has married. His mother is pushing for him to marry, too. He hopes to be on the massive ark the emperor is building to take the people across the sea, hopefully to a green and thriving place.

Cyrus grows from a sheltered, self absorbed boy. He sees the workers, stolen from their homes, who labor in his wool processing factory, who mine the valuable plastic. He reads ancient scrolls that shatter everything he ever believed about history and the world. Most importantly, he learns that the stories we tell create the world we believe in. Change the story and change the world.

In the author’s note, Larison reveals the inspiration for this story. “History reveals countless examples of technological regression,” he tells us. “Any technology may be just as fragile as the ecosystem of nature, culture, and alliance that fueled it.” We exploit the world to collapse. Yet, humanity survives, even if only a few hundred. There will be a future. Another chance to get things right.

The story is a warning, but not without hope.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.