Notes from the Burning Age

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A gripping, utterly involving, dystopian eco-thriller that balances the intimacies of betrayal against global climate collapse’ Daily Mail The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (as Claire North) nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel Ven is, eventually. a likeable protagonist whom North subjects to all manner of challenges: he is beaten, tortured mentally and physically, spends quite a bit of time captive or on the run, almost drowns yet recovers to return to his mission. At one stage, one of his mentors comments that he will present a danger to anyone who gives him shelter. North sets her tale in a futuristic dystopia, a vaguely-recognisable Europe where the predicted environmental destruction is in full swing. The politics is initially a little convoluted, but patience is rewarded with some rather good action once the groundwork is laid. The pronouns used for those of undefined gender do, at times, cause a little confusion. The Who’sTheSpy mystery was resolved in a single exposition within the last 10% of the novel which I didn’t like at all.

It was about the time of the great migrations, when all the nations began to splinter like the burning bough and the wars of water and grain came upon the lands, that the kakuy woke. First they rose from the skeletons of the ocean reefs, glistening bone and acid breath. Then they climbed from the shattered mines, and their eyes were embers of coal and their feet broke the towns beneath their feet. Then they came from the sky itself, upon thunder and lightning they blazed, tearing down the monuments of man and bidding the earth swallow whole the sacrileges of the Burning Age. The book description speaks of Notes From The Burning Age being a post apocalyptic story of humanity trying to find itself, but more than that this is a spy novel. It is first and foremost a spy novel worthy of comparison to the work of John Le Carré as opposed to any post apocalyptic novel I've read. But typical of North that doesn't summarise what the story is either.Notes from a Burning Age is a stunning achievement. The stories included clash, intersect, conflict, and betray each other for precedence. The sheer lyricism of CN's writing softens somewhat the harshness of the dystopian narrative of subversion and betrayal in a future jostling to organize itself after the great burnings. From one of the most imaginative writers of her generation comes an extraordinary vision of the future… Ok, you’ve got that probably: all those Middle-European names are a little bit twisted, just like the Danube got the “Ube”. The stories touches many of the Middle-European cities like Vienna, Budapest, Bukarest, or Belgrad, finally reaching Istanbul.

Everything after is a dance: Ven and Georg and Yue, trying to start a war, trying to prevent one, trying to protect the world, trying to free it. As a whole, Notes is a novel of cycles, of transitions. It is about the terrible cost of disposability, the burden of secrets, the power of faith and recycling. But more than that, it is a top-tier spy story, a very physical war story, a mature love story, unromantic in the way that it doesn't lie or add glitter to anything. It begins as an idyllic homage to A Canticle For Leibowitz, becomes a Cold War mole-hunting LeCarre pastiche and ends in an Ayn Rand-vs-Margaret Atwood philosophical cage match. Cycles within cycles, all of them brilliant, horrifying, cool. The plot is big and covers a lot, but I never felt my interest flagging. Claire North combines a tale of espionage with philosophy; North’s world is vivid, and Ven’s life and interactions are full of tension, and many times suddenly violent. At the same time the text is frequently beautiful, and has scenes full of sound and wonder.A riveting tale of subterfuge and deadly self-indulgence” ( Publishers Weekly, starred review) from award-winning author Claire North, Notes from the Burning Age puts dystopian fiction in a whole new light. On the other hand, Georg is a powerful entity in and of himself. He is resourceful, secretive and manipulative. He is a puppet master and most people don’t even know what he is making them do. He is the perfect mafia warlord. Prayers are for gifts.They are for blessed things, bestowed with mercy, compassion. They are raised up in exaltation...and cry out for special attention, for the world to be something other than what it is....p214 Catherine Webb (born 1986) is a British author. She also writes fantasy novels for adults under the name Kate Griffin, [1] and she writes science fiction as Claire North. [2] Life [ edit ] It turns out that knowing history just makes it easier to repeat it. (I mean, could you recreate a nuclear reactor without detailed documentation?) Ven, a former priest of the nature-loving Temple, is recruited by the Brotherhood to translate these heresies stolen from the archives by an unknown and very clever spy. And from here - to say much more would be a spoiler - begins an intricate game of cat-and-mouse, spies and traitors, and a world on the brink of destruction. Yes, again.

Though most people are happy to accept what they have so as not to anger the kakuy, there are others eager to regain the many ancient technologies, however destructive, and the power and gender structures of a strong man, and subservient others, including the earth, from the pre-Burning days. It remembers me too much of Miller’s “Canticle for Leibowitz” (review), and not in a good way. I’d recommend rather to read that one.

Customer reviews

Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North is about a utopian society built from the ashes of a burning world. Scholars and archivists of the Temple have long searched and collected artifacts from our present age, preserving the knowledge so it may not fall into the wrong hands. The world has been at peace, keeping these spirits (“kakuy”) at bay. But man is bound to get greedy and want more. There will always be people for whom equality and equity are not enough, people who need praise and power, and that will be the downfall of utopia. Notes From the Burning Age marks the return of award-winning writer Claire North and her most powerful and imaginative novel yet - a spellbinding tale set in a future utopian society that is thrilling, moving and thought-provoking in equal measure. Once, the spirits of the mountain, sea and sky rose against humankind. They punished us for the heresies of the Burning Age - the time when we cared so little for the world that it went up in flames. We learned to fear them, honour them, and in the centuries of peace which followed, the spirits slept. Ven Marzouki used to be a holy man, studying texts from the ashes of the past, sorting secrets from heresies. But when he gets caught up in the political scheming of the Brotherhood, he finds himself in the middle of a war, fuelled by old knowledge and forbidden ambition. And as the land burns again, the great spirits stir. This is a visionary, richly imaginative set in an age after the world has fallen (and burned), this masterfully imaginative story asks whether humankind can change the paths we seem fated to follow.

By the time Brotherhood operative, Georg Mestri finds him, he’s working in a cellar bar. Vien’s Justice and Equality Brotherhood is opposed to the Council, believing that humanity can best be served by reviving the fuels, the resources, the industry of the Burning Age. Temple, on the other hand, recommends giving thanks for the land, the sea, the sky, espouses being in harmony with the earth, doing nothing to rouse the kakuy, whose wrath spares none. This conflict fuels the action of the book, of those feeling only a few deserve the best of technologies, comforts and opportunities, as exemplified by the Brotherhood, and many others have a strong belief in community, of being mindful of one’s affect on the land and on others. On the surface, Notes from the Burning Age appears to be a post-apocalyptic tale of survival on a future Earth ravaged centuries earlier by war and man's poisoning of the environment. Yet it develops into something else - a bittersweet dystopian tale of intrigue and espionage, where the central question becomes one of man's place in the world. Whether humanity can stay humble in the face of the environmental devastation it once wrought, or is doomed to repeat the cycle and again become a victim of its own arrogance. Does man stand above and apart from nature, destined to control it, or is he just a part of the larger whole? Notes from the Burning Age is the remarkable and captivating new novel from the award-winning Claire North that puts dystopian fiction in a whole new light. We have developed so much in the last few centuries, with advances in medicine and warfare, and it does make sense that knowing how this knowledge may be used, for bad or worse, and having the option to start over, people might not want it to fall in the wrong hands.But when the revolutionary Brotherhood approaches Ven, pressuring him to translate stolen writings that threaten everything he once held dear, his life will be turned upside down. Torn between friendship and faith, Ven must decide how far he’s willing to go to save this new world, and how much he is willing to lose. There is an organization called the “Brotherhood” who wants to break free from the reclusive rule of the monasteries, who want to return to humanity’s former state of knowledge, including the atomic bomb, strip mining, and sub-prime mortgages. They want to free humanity from the Kakuy. Their leader Georg has access to heretical data passed to him by a spy. Here Ven comes into play, because Georg needs him to validate and translate the data. Notes from The Burning Age is set in a future post-apocalyptic time and there are subtle links to our existing geography. Most of the book takes place around a city called Budapesht, which resembles the spelling of present-world Budapest. The establishment of the Temple and their priests for conserving knowledge points to religious beliefs in the area and I found the commentary around the kakuy not being gods interesting. Once, the spirits of the mountain, sea and sky rose against humankind. They punished us for the heresies of the Burning Age – the time when we cared so little for the world that it went up in flames. We learned to fear them, honour them, and in the centuries of peace which followed, the spirits slept.