Today I’m joining the blog tour for The Descent. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

A young man and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet to uncover the origin of the events that set the world on its course to disaster … The prescient, deeply shocking prequel to the bestselling, critically acclaimed Climate Emergency thriller, The Forcing.

Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation in search for a refuge in the Southern Ocean. Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the planet on its course to disaster were the stories his step-father, long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, The Forcing.

But there are huge gaps in the story that his mother, still alive but old and frail, steadfastly refuses to speak of, even thirty years later. When he discovers evidence that his mother has tried to cover up the truth, and then stumbles across an account by someone close to the men who forced the globe into a climate catastrophe, he knows that it is time to find out for himself.

Determined to learn what really happened during his mother`s escape from the concentration camp to which she and Kweku´s father were banished, and their subsequent journey halfway around the world, Kweku and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet. What they find will challenge not only their faith in humanity, but their ability to stay alive.

The Descent is the devastating, nerve-shattering prequel to the critically acclaimed thriller The Forcing, a story of survival, hope, and the power of the human spirit in a world torn apart by climate change.

Review:

Science fiction isn’t my usual genre, but having read The Forcing last year and been captivated by it, I was interested to see what the author’s next book might look like. The Descent is written in two parts, firstly in sections set in the near future and secondly in sections set in the 2060s, and this, rather unusually, makes it both a prequel and a sequel. In the earlier sections, we meet a young woman, Sparkplug, who is working amongst the corruption and policy making. In the later sections, we meet Kweku, attempting to find his family after years of war. The premise is horrifying, yet it feels chillingly realistic, particularly in terms of the politics and attitude to climate change across the world at the moment. Switching between the sections, with chapters that are quite short, really helped to bring to the fore the effects of climate change and the disastrous consequences for the world and its population.

In Kweku’s sections, he travels to several destinations across the world in order to find his family. I loved the way that Paul E Hardisty described them so vividly so that I could picture where Kweku and his family were, especially as they were sailing. Once more, despite The Descent not belonging to my usual genre, I was enthralled and couldn’t stop reading. I was captivated by his journey, and there was always a sense of danger bubbling under the surface that kept me engaged the whole way through.

Paul E Hardisty has created some wonderful characters in The Descent. It did take me some time to work out how each character was connected, particularly across the timelines, however I was fascinated by them, if I could trust them and how things would work out for them. The author places them all in some difficult situations which helps to raise a number of issues alongside climate change.

I will be thinking about this novel and its message for some time to come.

The Descent is available from Amazon.

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