The Book of Koli (The Rampart Trilogy 1)

In a post-apocalyptic world where people have survived in small pockets, living in villages with high walls to hold back nature. For nature, which was subjected to much at the hands of humanity in the world before, now fights back. And it has teeth. The trees move, and can use their roots, which end in scythes, to kill, or their branches to choke. The animals all kill, and you had best not be caught outside of your village walls.In Koli's village, there are the Ramparts, villagers who have been chosen to protect everyone else. They are chosen because they are the ones for whom the old tech, what little they have, actually works. Koli is not a Rampart, but he wishes to be. And when he learns a long-held secret about how the old tech chooses those for whom it will work, he becomes determined to find some old tech and become a Rampart.But there are those who would rather lose a single villager than risk that secret getting out, and before Koli has a chance to really process what has happened, he is facing the killer flora and fauna and only a slim chance of survival.I will be honest. I picked up this book only because it fit a square on my r/fantasy bingo card, and since it was a square that I was having trouble finding books for, I figured I would give this one a try. I didn't really expect much, though I don't know why because it did have a bunch of good reviews and recommendations. So, to say that this book exceeded my expectations doesn't really mean much. To say that it blew me away and that I listened to it in a single day should mean more. This book was awesome, and once I started it, I didn't want to stop.The world building that was done was absolutely amazing and reminded me very much of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village set in a post-apocalyptic world, and I was here for every minute of it. Told in the first person from Koli's point of view combined with the sense of him telling the story at some point in the future much like a memoir was wonderful, and made it seem almost real. I loved the talking past each other that happened when Koli and Monono had me giggling several times.The characters were extremely well-developed, and I found myself empathizing even with those who were essentially bad guys because it was clear that they cared about those they were protecting and sometimes had to make tough decisions to protect the greater good. Well, almost all of them. There's one of them that doesn't fall into that category, but I don't want to give them away so you'll just have to read the book to find out. And you should definitely read this book.In fact, I would actually recommend listening to the book over reading it. The language the people speak has done what languages do over periods of time: it has changed. In many cases, it has become simplified, and listening to it gave a much different experience than reading it would. The narrator, Theo Solomon, had a cadence to his narration that was wonderful to listen to, and now that I've finished it, I already want to listen to it again. I won't, though, because I intend to listen to the next two books in the trilogy. Once I finish all 3, then I will listen again. What about you? Will you give this one a shot?

4/5I'm familiar with Mike Carey through comics such as Lucifer, Hellblazer, and The Unwritten (adore them all) but had yet to give his prose under M.R. Carey a shot. I'm certainly glad I did since this was a bundle of fun adventure.The book follows Koli, a young man growing in a post apocalyptic world set hundreds of years from a present day much like our own. As such, civilization has collapsed into a feudal-like society wherein the technology of the past is seen as magical (A top trope of mine) and plants/animals have evolved to more dangerous versions. Due to circumstances, Koli is made an outcast in his village and forced to confront the outside world.While there are tropes,they are all expertly executed. What makes this stand out from its counterparts in the genre is how joyful it revels in the adventure. It really reminded me of Kamandi by Kirby. That's not to say there aren't bad times or moments of horror or action; There are!The prose is easy-going yet has moments of beauty or highly quotable lines. The characters are also excellent with Koli being a subdued yet empathetic main character who would rather love than fight. Other characters such as the artificial AI or Ursula the witch flash out the world wonderfully and add variety.The only negatives I have are some mild pacing issues near the middle with some repetition (Koli spends a few times being locked up) and the story is certainly just one part of a three book series.I'm itching to get to the next one!

This is easily one of my personal favourites for 2020.The near future: The Earth is empty. The hustle and bustle of human civilisation, the overcrowded cities, the towers of glass and steel are gone. Technology has regressed to the Middle Ages, and what remains of humanity has found refuge in isolated communities, surrounded by tall fences, forever fighting an uphill battle for survival.The main character here is the Forest. Sometimes present, usually referenced, always implied as a looming presence. But this is not our forest. This is a hostile ground teeming up with carnivorous trees and strange beasts, always ready to make a meal out of a negligent human.It is strongly implied that Earth has suffered a man-made cataclysm (or series of cataclysms): An effort to counter the effects of climate change and deforestation by tweaking plant genome has gone horribly wrong... Filling in the blanks is largely left to the imagination of the reader, a tool I have found to be most effective for creating a creepy atmosphere.(A sidenote: this is the first post-apocalyptic book I can think of, where the ‘Apocalypse’ has not come as a result of an external impact, war or man’s abuse of Earth’s resources, but rather as a consequence of an attempt to fix the havoc we have ourselves wreaked on our biosphere.Science fiction has always acted as a sort of an ‘early warning machine’, tolling the bell about nuclear war, climate change or genetic engineering long before they were seen as threats by the general public. This book feels very much like such an early warning, and I do hope that there will be more of these to follow: I am namely quite sure our attempts to ‘save’ nature could be just as disastrous as the push to ‘harness’ it a century or so ago. But back to the book:)One such isolated community, deep, deep down in the Forest, is Mythen Rood. It is protected by ‘Ramparts’, people capable of wielding the few pieces of working technology left by their ancestors. Everyone tests for this ability at a coming-of-age ceremony when they turn 15, but the tech rarely, if ever, responds to anyone new. And curiously, it is usually descendants of the same family that ever get ‘picked’ by it…When our protagonist, Koli, fails to wake the working tech at his own ceremony, this deals a double blow to him: Not only does this crush his dream of becoming a ‘Rampart’, but it also dashes his hope ever of getting back the girl he is in love with. And so, in a last-ditch attempt, he concocts a plan to steal some of the community’s ‘dead’ tech and try to wake it and claim as his own. His efforts are wildly successful—but oh, how wrong things go after that!I do not wish to dwell here on Koli or on his personality. There have been plenty of other comments on how ‘emotionally immature’, ‘irresponsible’ and ‘unlikeable’ he is. I do not really disagree with them—and, neither, for that matter, does the narrator, an older Koli, who says, in his very own words, ‘I was fifteen years old, I thought myself in love and in all respects, I was as shallow as a puddle’…But is he alone here? My two cents: An emphatic NO. Most 15-year-olds are a mess. After all, do you remember that special period in your life that everyone goes through, where you have your hormones raging and are rebellious and no one ‘understands’ you? Yes, that period exactly, the one called ‘puberty’? It is very easy to forget what you yourself were like when you were 15, this is what I will say, and I will leave it at that.And the novel, despite the name and Koli as narrator, is hardly about him. The Book of Koli is more about world-building and atmosphere: M.R. Carey has captured, to the smallest of details, how comforting, yet also how suffocating it is to live in a community as closely-knit as this one. Add to that the toxicity of secrets, the ever-looming threat of the Forest and the sense of wonder of what lies beyond it, and so we get the most atmospheric book I have read since Dan Simmons’ The Terror.As I am also familiar with some of Carey’s other works, I can also see how much Carey’s writing has improved over the years. Both characterisation and storytelling are classes above Carey’s own The Girl with All the Gifts. There are wonderful, living and breathing, morally ambiguous human characters (e.g., Catrin Vennastin) rather than walking cliches. There is also a subtle—and very well executed wink—at transgender rights. This book is a real gem.

An absolute delight. Koli lives in a post apocalyptic village, where the outside is a threat to life – genetically mis modified plants and trees kill, never mind animals. This is just about kept at bay by weapons from the old tech, which only ‘Ramparts’ can use – a caste and a surname, who in Koli’s village know the secret of using it – turning it on, in fact. When he finds out, from a traveling doctor with her own awesome tech, how they have been keeping power to them selves he’s furious, burning hotter froom a bit of thwarted love interest in Spinner, who marries his friend, a Rampart. He steals some of the tech which turns out to be a music player, to his frustration. He gets caught, and expelled into the wide world and this takes a bit of getting to – it is fairly obvious the outline of what is going to happen and the shoe takes a while to drop. But worth the wait because of the intricate world building and the introduction of a new character. The capture by mad religious zealots is also on the predictable side. But the best of this book is the character of the music player – Monomo Aware – a Japanese pop star – but as Koli sends her off to upgrade an alarm system to use it as a weapon she/it upgrades into a far more knowing, aware AI, aware too of her own template’s suicide and life in a collapsing world. Her bouncy, determined, mournful voice from a world which has passed comes as quite a shock and works so well in contrast to Koli’s slightly fractured language and grammar. That’s is just a technical device but the affection between this like able boy hero with a central moral core and the sad, strong, protective AI is pretty marvellous. Cant wait for the next part and don’t have to wait long.

Koli is the main pov character, he lives in a small village, centuries after an apocalyptic war / pandemic / famine / supergau.Very intense voices / pov... the evolution and development of language, traditions and the meaning of technology, science and rituals over centuries in a post apocalyptic environment is shown and narrated in such a distinctive and natural way, it immedietaly feels realistic and close to the bone.Then Koli finds something, someone, who's never going to give him up, never going to let him down, and everything changes for Koli and Mythen Rood.

Se lee con voracidad y el único problema es esperar a la segunda parte de la trilogía, que al menos ya está anunciada.

über 300 Jahre nach der Apocalypse des Planeten kämpfen die Nachfahren der Überlebenden im früheren England täglich um ihre Existenz. Sie haben ihre eigenen Sitten und Gebräuche entwickelt und wissen wenig von früheren Jahrhunderten. Der junge Koli findet etwas heraus, das anderen gefährlich wird und muss fliehen. Die Geschichte seiner Wanderung wird hier erzählt. Eine bedrückende und spannende Geschichte.

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.