The Book of Koli by M. R. Carey – A Book Review

Blurb:

Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognisable landscape. A place where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don’t get you, the Shunned men will.

Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He believes the first rule of survival is that you don’t venture too far beyond the walls.

He’s wrong.

 

Author: M. R. Carey

Publisher: Orbit

Series: The Rampart Trilogy

Pages: 400

Genre: Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian

Release Date: 16\04\2020

My Chosen Format: Kindle

My Rating of ‘The Book of Koli’: 4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon UK, Amazon US, Audible UK, Audible US

 

Review:

Just a bit of warning to anyone who fancies picking this up, the writing style is difficult to start with but charming when you get used to it. I say difficult, as it reads like it’s written in a very uneducated way (which it is, given the character of Koli). It can take some getting used to, but don’t let that put you off as the book itself is well worth reading.

Koli’s different style of speech makes for a different kind of reading experience. This is a very slow book. The first 50% feels like nothing but build up and, were it not for Koli’s speech style then I think it would have been boring. But through his way of speech, and obviously because it’s 1st person narrative, you are viewing his world through his eyes and learning at his rate. It makes the slowness feel less tedious as, once used to it, Koli’s voice is really quite an enjoyable vehicle in which to travel through his world.

The Book of Koli is set long after our world has been destroyed by some war or another. Tech from ‘the old times’ is left scattered around and those that can use it are revered as leaders. Who wouldn’t want to be a leader, to feel important? Who on earth would simply want to just be a follower and do what they’re told for the rest of their lives without any input on how things go? Not Koli. And that ambition gets our protagonist in all sorts of trouble.

The world Koli inhabits, though very similar to ours is also very different. The leisurely act of reading a book under a tree, basking in the heat of a warm sunny day, isn’t something that can be enjoyed for Koli. The trees are murderous and the sun brings out all manner of vegetation and wildlife that men and women are smart enough to fear. Imagine living in a world where rain and gloom was loved and seen as a good thing. Urgh! It would be like living as one of the Cullens in the world of Twilight. Just imagine it, the cold horror. The cold, sparkly horror.

Fear not, there’s no sparkling vampires in this. Only joy at heavy clouds and rain, for it keeps the sun at bay and the deadly flora asleep. M. R. Carey has created a post apocalyptic world that is reminiscent of the one in the video game ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ and one that I am incredibly eager to learn more about it. I want to know what happened to lay our world low and just how bad this cataclysm must have been to thrust our people into another dark age. 

The book, wonderful as it is, isn’t perfect. As I mentioned, it’s very slow to start off and doesn’t really feel like anything truly happens until the halfway point. But that’s only a small issue as it’s still enjoyable. Another small issue is consistency. Koli routinely gets words wrong that he wouldn’t have heard before or understand (diagnostic becomes dagnostic for example) yet when characters who do know what they are talking about, these words are spelt and pronounced correctly … yet they revert back to incorrect when Koli is writing the narrative. Just kind of feels a bit awkward as, seeing as how Koli is writing the bits where the characters say them correctly, you think he’d carry on using it correctly after that. Again, only a small thing and probably only really an issue if you’re being a tad over-critical.

What this book does really well, is create good characters with even better connections. It’s far too easy to find yourself liking certain characters or hating others as though they had done you a personal wrong which shows great writing on Carey’s part. My own personal favourite character was a bit of tech, but I imagine many readers will have loved her due to the quirky nature of the character.

All in all, I look forward to book two and to finding out more about Koli’s past and, indeed, his future.