#BlogTour ‘The Book Of Koli’ by M.R Carey

About the book…

The first in a gripping new trilogy, The Book of Koli charts the journey of one unforgettable young boy struggling to find his place in a chilling post-apocalyptic world. Perfect for readers of Station Eleven and Annihilation.


Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable world. A world where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly vines and seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don’t get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will.

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

What he doesn’t know is — what happens when you aren’t given a choice?

Huge thanks to Tracy Fenton and Orbit for the blogtour invite and gifted review copy of this, the first in a new trilogy from one of my favourite writers, MR Carey. Out from April 14th, ‘The Book Of Koli’ is the first in the Rampart trilogy.

We live in strange and worrying times.

The dystopian nature of this novel is so easily reflected in our current situation where the hubris of humankind is catastrophically displayed in nature taking control, leading to an ‘Ingland’ where the people -we the readers- are a long distant memory.

Various relics exist from ‘our’ time ,forming the basis of myths and legends surrounding those who are able to ‘call’ or connect with the data.Those who can do this are granted a title as ‘Rampart’ , at a  ceremony which takes place when the increasingly small number of children in the village that Koli and his family live in, reach the age where they are called to the ‘Waiting House’ to meet their future destiny.

As we used to do in older times, people chose their surnames based on their skill set so, ‘Woodsmith’, ‘Tanner’ etc are their new family names. This reflects a smaller set of individuals working together for a common good-survival.

Koli, his sisters and mother spend their days inside the walls of their settlement, raised on stories of our time where tech and data ruled, and man’s interference with nature led to the trees gaining a sense of pleasure when tasting the flesh of people. So there are killing plants and trees, ad amongst them, the shunned men who are cannibals and someohow live outside of this society.

Koli is the narrator of the novel, creating a sense of believability that I think can only come from the sense of a teen trying to understand the world he is living, in by relating it in his narrative. Through his eyes, we become aware of the changes in the place we know as the UK, the challenges of living -child bearing is an increasing concern for the inhabitants of Mythen Rood-the societal hierachy and the way that society has collapsed.

It is told with a dreamlike sense of uncertainty , where Koli’s notions of what is, and what was, are based on myths and tale telling supported by a narrative which surrounds the buildings in Mythen Rood, his awareness of what lies beyond the walls of the town and his own sense of where he fits in. This could have been expositional in a way that a lot of young adult fiction is written, but with MR Carey’s skillful handling of the tale, it becomes almost like a lullaby, a soporific and dream like state which you fall into whilst reading that conjures a world not so far distant from our own.

The most obvious connections that I felt when reading this was the conflict between nature, and nurture along wiith the Frankenstein-esque sense of humans as not knowing what they are doing when they presume to level themselves with te great creator, God. In the absence of a ‘God’ in this world-referred to as the ‘dead god’-this is used as a cautionary tale to keep the people safe. Misplaced belief in a system where experimentation has gone so far wrong, that is has forever changed human reality is, after all, what Koli is living through.

The whole ‘just because we can doesn’t mean we should’ theme is a narrative threaded through most dystopian fiction, as well as trying to establish the ‘new normal’. Koli’s sense of the world and how he grows into it are remarkably mature themes, told through a narrative voice which is both compelling and easy to listen to. MR Carey does not waste page after page creating new languages, new myths and science in a world not far removed from our own, he world builds through the eyes of a growing teen becoming aware of his place in the world. He has to make the choice that all of us do-stay in the world he knows, confined by the safety afforded by the ruling family, or leave and face being killed either by those who stand outside of society-the shunned men-or carniverous vegetation.

The quest to become a ‘Rampart’ -a holder of one of the three pieces of tech left in this world-is where his self-awareness of his part in his family, and wider society’s, future, stannds on a precipice of discovery. A secret about the Mythen Rood ruling family, his loyalty to a system which favours this family, falling in love and finding your destiny are all well known tropes in the post apocalyptic y.a world. However, I found that Koli’s voice was one that compelled me to listen to him, one that sets him and his world up with a solid foundation and room to grow in the upcoming sequels.

‘The Book Of Koli’ is definitely one to read in my humble opinion, as we try and make sense of the real world and it’s state of uneasiness, where the people who do the menial tasks in society are now afforded the moniker of ‘hero’, where those relied upon have the oldest skills (farming, nursing, teaching) become the most needed amongst us, where isolation and fear are daily concerns , this is a book for our times.

About the author…

Carey was born in Liverpool, England, in 1959 – describing his young self as “one of those ominously quiet kids.. As a child, he maintained an interest in comics, writing and drawing primitive stories to entertain his younger brother. He earned a first class degree in English at St Peter’s College, Oxford before becoming a teacher. He continued to teach for 15 years before moving on to writing comics.

Links-https://www.mikecarey.net/

https://www.compulsivereaders.com/

Twitter @michaelcarey191 @Tr4cyF3nt0n @orbitbooks