Told in an enchanting, confessional first-person, we’re with Koli all the way, from the stifling security of village life into the direst peril — a mad, cannibal cult holed up in a railway tunnel, to be exact.
Armed only with his wits and a chatty music player from before the Fall, Koli rejects his fate and proves there is more to life than mere survival.
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Koli is the first in a trilogy, the other two volumes being due for release over the course of 2020 (or at least that’s the plan). It reads very much like a curtainraiser, promising more than it delivers. We are told of carnivorous trees, for instance, but hardly see them in action. Meanwhile Koli’s first-person narrative voice, full of neologisms and colloquialisms, manages to be both charming and off-putting. By combining ingredients from Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and Brian Aldiss’s Hothouse and adding a dash of Walter M Miller Jr’s A Canticle For Leibowitz, Carey serves up an intriguing new fusion...
