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Paul E. Hardisty

Autore di The Abrupt Physics of Dying

10 opere 76 membri 8 recensioni

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The Descent is both a prequel and a sequel to Hardisty’s 2023 novel, The Forcing, a book which I loved (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2023/02/review-of-forcing-by-paul-e-hardisty.html).

There are two timelines. In 2066, Kweku Ashworth, along with his wife Julie and son Leo, sets sail from southern Australia to find missing family and to learn exactly what happened on the sea voyage taken by his stepfather David (Teacher) and his mother Francoise 25 years earlier as they looked for a safe haven from the hellish conditions of a world ravaged by climate change. This timeline shows what happens after the end of The Forcing, and through his discoveries during his travels, Kweku is able to fill in the events Teacher didn’t detail in his written record.

The second timeline covers events from 40 years earlier. Kweku hears a series of radio transmissions in which a woman, who calls herself Sparkplug, reads her journal entries from February 2024 to February 2039. Because she is the personal secretary for the Boss, the ultra-wealthy and ultra-powerful head of a multinational conglomerate, she is privy to the machinations of those like her employer who build sanctuaries for themselves while also maximizing profits by spreading disinformation about climate change. This timeline explains the events that led to the world described in The Forcing.

My experience has been that prequels and sequels are often disappointing. I usually find myself asking whether a follow-up book is really necessary. Is it just a rehash? I must admit that I found The Descent to be less powerful than The Forcing. In the latter, we meet Derek Argent, a villainous businessman who focused on the growth of his personal wealthy, exploited others, and sowed doubt by spreading disinformation about climate change. The Descent details exactly how the Boss and his ilk ruthlessly lie, manipulate, and exploit in order to profit. There’s nothing new here. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see how easily the Boss is able to accomplish what he wants.

The novel is terrifying in its realism. Sparkplug’s diary begins in February 2024, the month of this book’s release, and refers to current events like the war in the Ukraine. Reference is made to things that are currently happening: “national debt in the major countries continued to balloon, with real wealth increasingly concentrated in the hands of a very small and increasingly wealthy powerful group of people . . . the completely inadequate, conscience-assuaging efforts to combat [climate change], a series of empty national pledges . . . a global rise in fascism, and the perils of not acting decisively to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions.” These actions, or lack thereof, are shown to lead directly to a dystopian near-future.

There are parallel characters between fiction and reality. For instance, Ellie Dahlberg, a Swedish climate activist, is obviously intended to be Greta Thunberg. The “big blue rocket” that looks “like a huge boner” surely refers to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. And Bragg (oh what a perfect name) is a stand-in for Donald Trump who is described as having “a strangely over-pigmented complexion . . . and a mullet hairdo” who boasts “like he’s some kind of successful businessman.” At times, I felt that the book was a warning about the dangers of re-electing Trump.

There is suspense in the plot, but the ocean voyage doesn’t come across as dangerous as I expected. Kweku and Julie seem to quickly and easily find the people they need to find to help them. They seem to have a lot of luck. And there’s a deus ex machina moment involving the U.S. navy. The addition of Fema bothered me; I immediately recognized her as a redshirt because she just seems to drift in and out of the narrative: sometimes she is mentioned and sometimes it’s as if she’s not travelling with them.
As in The Forcing, there is, despite the dire state of the planet, some hope. Near the end, there’s discussion of actions that could be taken now: “legislation taxing carbon and diverting the proceeds into renewable energy projects . . . climate-adaptation projects . . . including building seawalls, re-establishing coastal wetlands, and re-greening cities.” The warning is that “it was way, way more expensive, and way harder to fix something after it broke than to prevent it from breaking in the first place.”

I recommend The Descent to those who have read The Forcing. The latter works as a standalone, but I'm not sure the former would. The Descent details the decisions and actions which create the world of The Forcing, but for me lacks the gut-punch impact of the first book.

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DCYakabuski).
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Schatje | Feb 26, 2024 |
This dystopian thriller is frightening because it’s believable, given that what is described is already happening to some extent. Just last month the Doomsday Clock, a symbol that represents the likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe, was moved to 90 seconds to midnight!

Angry at years of denial and inaction to address issues such as climate change which threatened the world, a government of young people has taken control of a unified North America. All those older than a prescribed age are held responsible for the state of the planet so are punished by having their assets confiscated before they are forcibly relocated to abandoned towns in the southern U.S. The narrator David, known as Teacher, and his wife May are moved from Calgary to Brownwood, Texas. There they share an apartment with five other people. Conditions are harsh in what is really an internment camp, but it’s his witnessing some violent incidents which convince Teacher they must escape.

There is a split narrative structure. In the present, David is 78 years old and living in Australia with his family. He has decided that he must write about his experiences so there is a historical record. He wants his children and grandchildren to know what happened. The other part of the narrative is David’s story describing events beginning with his receiving a letter about relocation.

Conditions on earth are hellish. David mentions volatile weather patterns, melting icecaps and tundra, droughts, and fires increasing in frequency and intensity. Islands and coastal cities have been submerged, lakes and rivers have been acidified, agricultural productivity has dropped dramatically, millions of people have been displaced, wars are fought for food, animal species are extinct, and coral reefs have degraded.

Human responsibility is made clear: we fill the oceans with plastic waste; we insist on “the continuous cycle of cheap, ever-changing disposable fashion, the permanent upgrade cycle of consumer electronics”; we’ve accumulated debt, thereby burdening future generations, and have done nothing to address economic inequality; “coal-fired power stations and refineries and mines [pump] shit into the atmosphere”; drilling for oil in the ocean has resulted in spills; and forests are cut for profit. And we do little or nothing to rectify the situation: “In myriad ways and at an infinite number of junctions, other choices could have been made, and each of those decisions would have ripped out through time and space and across all humanity, and the course of history could have been changed.”

I appreciated the reference to the role of fake news and misinformation. David mentions people being “manipulated by all of the garbage on the internet and in the media, where any hack or grievant could post whatever rubbish they liked, camouflaging it as official, credible, where everything was exactly the opposite of what it claimed, where every site whose tagline claimed to provide ‘independent objective information’ was guaranteed to be a platform for extremist polemic, where facts and truth were garbled and mashed and cherry-picked to suit agendas.” The narrator accuses a wealthy industrialist that when some people raised the alarm, he “’bribed governments, financed campaigns designed to cast doubt in the minds of people everywhere, paid celebrities and bogus scientists to confuse the public.’”

The protagonist is a likeable character. He cares for other people and, like Kwesi and Francoise – two of his housemates, recognizes the need to work together. He is introspective, wondering whether he could have done more, and living up to his nickname, feels it important to teach the world about the errors made in the past.

The obvious villain is Derek Argent who epitomizes the worst of humankind. He is insensitive and arrogant. Greedy and self-centred, he is willing to manipulate and exploit others. For instance, he willingly takes food from his housemates but doesn’t share what he has. Even when he purportedly has the interests of others in mind, it is revealed that his motives are always selfish. His surname, a reference to the metal silver, is perfect because growing his personal wealth is his primary concern. And he used his money “’to hide the truth by sowing doubt, spreading disinformation, and lies . . . [and] spent millions to make scientific fact look like a debate.’” The portrayal may not be intentional, but I thought of Donald Trump.

There is tension throughout. Many people are concerned only with their own survival and will do whatever is necessary to ensure that. The internment camp has its dangers, but then so does the world outside. Society has become intolerant so homosexuality is considered a deviancy. Women are enslaved and treated as breeders. David and his companions are warned about traveling south: “’What remains is in control of pirates, miscreants.’”

Despite the dire state of the planet, there is still hope. We need to recognize our flaws: “we lost sight of the natural rhythms of the places around us and began to believe that we were masters of everything we saw and touched, and so we ceased to wonder.” David’s life in the present suggests that the natural world can recover and people can return to a simpler life more in tune with nature. And “Every day is an opportunity.” In the meantime, if we do not act, we are culpable: “how we decide to use this precious ebb of time is what will determine the fate of the world and of all those we love.”

This is a powerful and thought-provoking story of how our inaction will have devastating implications for future generations who will have to rebuild what we’ve destroyed. Terrifying in its realism, this is a must-read book. Anyone not affected by it has not been paying attention to current events.

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
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Schatje | Feb 16, 2023 |
Reconciliation for the Dead – Simply Brilliant

The final instalment of the Claymore Straker trilogy will leave you breathless, aghast and wishing that it were not a trilogy. Once again Paul E. Hardisty has researched and written a brilliant thriller and this time looking at a period in South Africa history that was considered hateful. This is also the height of the cold war, when the west took on the east in many different forums but not actually fighting each other. This is simply a brilliant thriller that is vividly written, absolutely gripping, topical and dripping with enough moral indignation not to be a turn off.

Once again Hardisty delivers a meaty thriller, that is well written, sophisticated and the atmosphere is dripping off every page. This really is an engaging thriller that ebbs and flows through out that grabs you from the first page to the last. I will miss Claymore Straker!

Over four days Claymore Straker is giving evidence to Archbishop Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission about events when he was a member of the South African Armed Forces. He goes back to 1980 when Clay was a young paratrooper, green behind the ears, fighting deep inside Angola against a communist insurgency in that country as it was seen to be threatening the Apartheid regime.

While in Angola they discover acts of war crimes, that will later come back to bite them both, as they become deeply entangled in a secret conspiracy that will put both their lives and those around them in danger. We meet the darker side of Military History of Operation Coast and ‘Dr Death’ and the systematic killing of SWAPO prisoners, as well as the murder of anti-Apartheid activists.

What we see is that naïve as Clay is, he is acting under orders and keeps wanting to know why they are doing things and what he sees. Even though he will end up in military hospital twice, he realises how brutal war is, but is beginning to question too much, and this will bring him to the attention of those is the South African secret police, whose crosshairs you do not want to be in.

It is over the four days of evidence that Clay gives to the commission that we see the full back story of his life and how it affected what he did in the previous books in this trilogy. He is looking for an amnesty for what he did, but when the ‘official’ records do not tally with your account then he will always be fighting against the tide. Will he be believed? Will he get an amnesty?

Sad to say goodbye to this great trilogy and the lead character Claymore Straker, who leaves us with the questions, is he a good man who did bad things, or a bad man who did good things? Paul E Hardisty has written a thriller that will be a gripping best seller.
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atticusfinch1048 | May 12, 2017 |
The Evolution of Fear – A Stonking Thriller

Paul E. Hardisty is back with his latest book The Evolution of Fear, the follow up to his successful debut The Abrupt Physics of Dying. Wow, what a stonkingly brilliant thriller we are given, this is a solid, full on thriller and Hardisty is proving to be an excellent thriller writer.

Hardisty has created a fantastic character in Claymore Straker who is a combination of Bourne and the Terminator for being literally indestructible, the charm of Bond and the diplomatic skills of Alan B’stard! What we the reader get is a thriller that is vividly written, in clear prose, that grabs you by the throat and takes you on a rollercoaster ride of emotions which makes this book compelling and utterly gripping.

Claymore Straker is a fugitive and wanted not just by various intelligence agencies there is a price on his head from a Russian crime family. He has been accused of terrorist acts in the Middle East, he has found out his best friend has been murdered. Rania, the woman he loves, is in danger but she has disappeared and he needs to find her. He knows he has been betrayed and the world is looking for him but he needs to keep going and put an end to those who threaten him and his love.

As he escapes from Cornwall he heads in to the eye of the storm and heads to Istanbul and then to both sides of the border on Cyprus. As the circle closes around Straker he needs to be careful who he trusts with his life and that of Rania, but he needs to find the reason behind why she is missing as well as too who is holding her.

He has to fight his way from Istanbul to Cyprus where he comes in to contact with not only Greek and Turkish extremists but the Russian Mafia, which is never helpful. The closer Straker gets to the truth and Rania the more things tend to go sideways and he has to fall back on all his military training to survive.

Like his body, he finds that Cyprus is under threat from destruction, and like any politician, what have they got to hide? There is unimaginable destruction being wrought on either side of the Green Line all in the name of money, where politics is being used as a side show to hide the truth.

The Evolution of Fear is an innovative thriller that keeps the reader hooked all the way through this novel, and like Straker never gives an inch to doubt. Hardisty is wonderfully descriptive at the same time aware of the politics of the region without preaching but he is the master of the detail.

I cannot express how brilliant this thriller as it is totally engrossing, drawing you in from the start and you need to roll with the punches all the way through. Hardisty gives no quarter to doubt, you will either be right behind Straker or at least fear him, who could be described quite easily as the Master of Disaster to his enemies.

A brilliant sequel to The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear is an exceptional thriller with non-stop action and delivers on every level. A truly stunning thriller!
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atticusfinch1048 | May 16, 2016 |

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Opere
10
Utenti
76
Popolarità
#233,522
Voto
4.2
Recensioni
8
ISBN
35

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