Allow me to rave for a moment about "The Book of Koli" to y'all. Also, too, "The Trials of Koli" and "The Fall of Koli," which together comprise the Rampart Trilogy by M. R. Carey.
What's so great about these books? Convincing and fascinating world-building, firstly. Koli lives in a world which at first seems like a medieval English village. But the village has "Ramparts," people who hold and control tech from centuries ago. A flamethrower, a database, a gun that never misses its target, and a glove that emits a force field. Plus, the forests outside their village are full of killer trees. Villagers must wait for cloudy days to go out hunting, otherwise the bloodthirsty trees will entangle, crush, and kill them by various means.
The second great thing about the story is the characters. Koli is at first a foolish, sometimes selfish, lovestruck boy whose main redeeming feature is that he really hates hurting other people and animals. Some reviewers complain about his weepiness, and he does cry a lot, but those folks are missing the point of Koli. He's not a typical adventuring hero, he's a boy becoming a man who ultimately succeeds (when he does succeed) in his quests because of his soft-hearted nature. He's also pretty good at woodworking and running fast, but that's about it. He's no good with weapons and he's not particularly clever. Fortunately, he's able to connect with people who are good with weapons (Cup, a girl who he inadvertently rescues from the clutches of a religious cult leader) and who are extremely clever (an older, probably autistic doctor who travels the land with a mission to restore enough genetic diversity to the people so that humanity doesn't die out entirely).
There's one more important main character, but to describe her in any detail would spoil some important elements of the first book, so I'll just leave it there.
I am approaching 50 years old and am completely over coming-of-age, YA type books. And yet this series never gave me the bored feeling that I sometimes get from reading about the struggles of teenagers to find themselves. Plus, there is positive trans representation (especially in books 2 and 3) and Koli is clearly described as being brown-skinned. 10/10, recommend for anyone. #SFF#ScienceFiction#SciFi#SpecFic#SpeculativeFiction#CliFi#ClimateFiction#Books#Bookstodon@bookstodon
(Carey is also the author of The Girl With All the Gifts and its sequel The Boy on the Bridge, both are very good. The first of those got turned into a decent movie.)
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