Notes from the Burning Age

this came up on my radar as claire north just released 'ithaca' which interested me but i was not too convinced by the idea of hera being the narrator. one of my long-time mutuals with excellent taste said, 'actually, i really loved notes from the burning age.' so it was an easy pick from my local library that happened to have it.

and i am so, so glad i picked this book up. and i am sorry that this review will be all over the place - my mind is still reeling from finishing it.

it is an excellent climatic post-apocalyptic novel that is neither too preachy nor political but simultaneously prompts questions about what we, as human kind, want for our future and what our current society is doing to the world we live in. it is a gripping novel that involves espionage and warfare and that kept me guessing about the direction it would take constantly. (something that, i am sure, was enhanced by the slower pace of the first 1/3 of the book and the breakneck pacing of the remainder - an experience that nearly reminded me of my beloved 'chainsaw man').

i truly cannot sell enough what an immersive experience it is to read 'notes from the burning age', how creative it is, how it grips you and does not let go. it truly felt like a novel tailored to me specifically. down to the kakuy who strongly reminded me of 'princess mononoke' - my favourite ghibli film. and truly, moments when ven sees the kakuy were the novel's most ghibli-esque moments which is saying a lot since as a whole it would not be out of place in ghibli's catalogue. it is a novel that paints a bleak faith for the world if humanity continues its path of destruction but it is also never without hope like that.

if there are some areas where i thought it could be stronger, it would perhaps be in ven's character. ven is an excellent protagonist and serves the purposes of the book well but i cannot help but wish that he had been given a little more depth or that his motivations were much more highlighted throughout the novel. this would have truly helped him leap off the page. (for example, it is clear that he has some sort of reverence towards nature, partly owing to his encounter with the kakuy as a child. what if this had been heightened? what if we, the reader, had also been able to truly experience the awe of being in the presence of a god and seeing god die?)

regardless, this still remains one of the best books i have read this year and i cannot recommend it enough.

as a side note, i really enjoyed the naming conventions in the novel. i am not sure if i have picked this up in another novels or a joke post on tumblr brought my attention to it but i love when sci-fi / dystopian fiction uses what are clearly misremembered / misspelled names of places, be it because records have been destroyed and humanity is going off from one semi-destroyed name sign, be it because there has been a mistranslation. 'notes from the burning age' truly embraces this and i had fun trying to guess which was which. vien was obviously vienna, the river ube is the danube, etc. (though i am still not quite certain where lyvodia is meant to be; it feels like it just on the tip of my tongue). i was glad to see plovdiv, now as plovdiq (i can see how в could be erased into a к), one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

but my absolute favourite was martyza eztok which i am convinced is maritsa iztok. martyza is exactly what happens when people try to transcribe this into latin script without knowing slavic languages, what a stroke of genius.

Content notes: (view spoiler)[death of a child (drowning), global climate disaster that nearly ended human life, violence (including guns, threats of amputation, stabbings), murder, torture, involuntary imprisonment and slavery, misgendering, PTSD, grief (hide spoiler)] If this book does not win a ton of awards, I will be truly disappointed. Climate change science fiction (I’ve heard it called cli-fi but I’m not sold on that name) isn’t anything new, as evidenced by last year’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction and N.K. Jemisin’s stellar “Emergency Skin.” But where this author truly excels is twisty plot and excellent characterization. Where most of those stories felt like far in the future scifi, this one felt in many ways startling immediate. “Our ancestors were so clever, so powerful. They were not afraid of fire.” “But they burned,” he replied. A gentle nudge, a casual correction. “They all burned.” “The kakuy burned them. If the kakuy hadn’t risen, maybe they could have tamed the world. Maybe they could.” He sucked in his teeth, long and slow. “Now that does sound like heresy.” Ven was kicked out of the priesthood for selling the heretical information he was supposed to catalog. These remnants of the Burning Age – when humans consumed profligately, uncaring of the effects of their actions on the world – can be as innocuous as cat pictures or as harmful as nerve agents and fracking. In these more enlightened times, mankind lives in harmony with the Earth, doing things like planting a tree for each one cut down and relying on solar power. They believe everything natural has a spirit, even rocks, and worship giant spirits known as kakuy. These are the creatures who their religion says woke and nearly destroyed human civilization before, and failing to respect nature again will have them return in flame and fire (my brain had too much fun drawing parallels to the dwarves in Moria and the Balrog!). But the Brotherhood is pushing those boundaries, believing that it’s mankind’s destiny to conquer nature, and it’s one of their leaders who blackmails Ven into translating stolen documents for Georg, one of the party’s behind-the-scenes leaders. As Ven gets deeper and deeper into the Brotherhood operation, it’s soon obvious that there’s more than just his life on the line if he tries to escape. And that’s as much as I can say without giving away too much. It’s the twists that sell this story. It’s a philosophical thriller at heart, and Ven is our mostly competent and amazing brave narrator, though he’d never describe himself that way. I loved him immensely and cared way too much about what happened to him. The prologue (set in his home village of Tinics) is an event from his childhood that shaped his life, but exactly how – and how profoundly – is something it takes the entire book for you to realize. The regular part of the book started off slowly, but after the first chapter or so, I was drawn into his first-person POV and simply couldn’t put the book down. There are vignettes from the book that keep popping into my head, little scenes like Ven interacting with a Jewish family (though it’s not specifically called out on page) or a tense moment in the ruins of a coal mine. Ven is at times witty or despairing, but the prose is always emotionally resonant, deeply evocative of the dystopian landscape that he lives in and feels connected to. It’s imaginative and encompassing, and finishing the book felt like saying goodbye to a dear friend. “The kakuy teach us that every breath of air is a gift, that the first shoot of spring green is a wonder to behold. But it is easier to be big and loud in your terror than to be tiny in your gratitude. We are to blame.” Interspersed with the espionage and terror and joy, this is a book about how humanity interacts with nature, whether we conquer nature or live in concert with it. The Temple understands that without nature there is no life – and without death, there is no life either. But it’s harder for people like Georg to accept that are people are equal to ants in the eyes of nature, and his brand of humanism further perpetuates the haves and have-nots we see in our own societies today. Perhaps it’s not so strange that the insistence on dominating the earth also usually goes hand-in-hand with subjugating other humans. The book highlights both the small impacts and societal impacts of climate change, whether it’s one of the fellow Brotherhood workers that Ven contemplates a fling with, or the lives of all the Temple novices in Vien; whether the time scale is life and untimely death of a child or the hundreds of years it took to recover from the Burning; whether it’s a lowly temple priest drinking tea or a kakuy prowling in the deep woods. “I saw the forest burn, when I was young.” Overall, it’s no exaggeration to say that this will easily be in my top 3 books of the year. It’s thought-provoking, emotionally resonant, and just a plain old thrilling read. Highly recommended! I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Probably more of a 3.5. I think it’s been a long while since I’ve read a proper dystopian novel, so this one took me some time to finish. Not that it wasn’t interesting, but I couldn’t find the pacing engaging enough. But I really did find the themes of climate change as well as the whole idea of future generations trying to piece together details about their ancestors’ technologies very fascinating. There is also a lot of translation, researching and archiving that goes on here and that was cool, because these are some fields which are very underrated despite being important and it’s quite rare that we find characters with these occupations in fiction. The plot was also interesting but what left the most impression on me was the question it leaves in our mind throughout - are we as humanity capable enough to learn from our mistakes, not let capitalist greed drive our decisions, and do something substantial to prevent our planet from further destruction. It’s definitely a very timely novel in this aspect, and I think anyone who enjoys the dystopian/ cli-fi sub genre would surely enjoy this one.

(3.5 stars out of 5)