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tamarant4's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
The future no longer bore thinking about.
So, tomorrow? What to expect of tomorrow?
The future had become a sequence of days: they survived this day, worked through it as it came, managed somehow. Tomorrow dawned with the apprehension that something else might have to be survived, worked through, managed. They lived on the edge. [p. 229]
In the first decade of the twentieth century, glaciologist Adler Beck makes the final corrections to his new book, Take Heed!—A Scientist Warns of the Terror to Come, in which he argues for the inevitability of the coming Ice Age. In the middle of the twenty-first century, Chad Ramsey negotiates redundancy (he was a police profiler) and stifling heat as he uses cutting-edge technology implants to research his family history. Both men are twins. Adler's bohemian brother Adolf, after a stint as an opera singer in Manaus, buys shares in a copper mine; flits around Europe, with the occasional letter to his brother; is convicted of defrauding multiple women, and imprisoned. Like his brother, Adolf is plagued by 'incursions' in which a man's voice questions him about his life. Chad's rather less bohemian brother Greg is working for a national broadcasting company as an investigative journalist, most recently involved with a company called Schmiederhahn which doesn't believe in coincidence.
Priest's depiction of near-future England is all too credible. 'Already the physical symbols of civilisation were serving notice.' The journey from Hastings to Heathrow takes nearly a day; storm-damaged sea defences are left to crumble, the hospitals only take emergency cases, wildfires devastate much of England's farmland. In contrast, Adler Beck's nineteenth-century life seems idyllic, despite disasters natural and otherwise, Adolf's precarious and mysterious lifestyle, and Adler's certainty that the ice is coming.
Priest draws together climate fiction (this is one of the most positive novels I've read on the subject), historical fiction and some futuristic technology into a story about brothers, about equilibrium and about hope. I found the contrast between Adler's sedate account and Chad's quiet desperation very effective, and the descriptive passages -- especially post-Krakatoa sunsets as seen from Blackheath -- vivid and credible. And I was fascinated to discover that, despite the standard disclaimer ('All the characters in this book are fictitious') Adolf Beck was a real person.
Surprisingly cheering, though near-future England, with its isolationist mentality and its gradual collapse, seems depressingly imminent. Expect it tomorrow.
Fulfils the ‘chapter headings have dates’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.
Fulfils the ‘a book that features twins’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.
hakimbriki's review
4.0
More like 3.5.
Expect Me Tomorrow has all the distinctive features of a Christopher Priest novel. His prose is as charming as it has ever been, and the plot is wrapped in the same eeriness and ethereality as most of his other works (those I have read, at least). Priest has an incredible talent for building up suspense, and for captivating his reader until the very end. I found the climate change commentary excellent and horrifying.
Although I enjoyed reading this novel, I do find it flawed. The connection between the various characters was lackluster. I expected more. Some of the plot devices, , were added to the story with little-to-no context, while the author provided ample context for others.
That being said, this was a pleasant read... I still wouldn't recommend it to the novice Priest reader.
Expect Me Tomorrow has all the distinctive features of a Christopher Priest novel. His prose is as charming as it has ever been, and the plot is wrapped in the same eeriness and ethereality as most of his other works (those I have read, at least). Priest has an incredible talent for building up suspense, and for captivating his reader until the very end. I found the climate change commentary excellent and horrifying.
Although I enjoyed reading this novel, I do find it flawed. The connection between the various characters was lackluster. I expected more. Some of the plot devices,
Spoiler
aka the brain-computer interfaceThat being said, this was a pleasant read... I still wouldn't recommend it to the novice Priest reader.
one_womanarmy's review
challenging
emotional
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
After finishing the final pages of Christopher Priest's pandemic-birthed novel, I was left with the same question that puzzled me in the first ten, fifty, and hundred pages of the book - what genre is it? Science fiction? Time travel? Historical fiction? A book about injustice? A clever climate denial scheme?
Expect Me Tomorrow is told across two narrative strands, featuring two sets of identical twins. Adolf and Adler Beck survive a glaciologist father; Adler pursues a career in climate science and Adolf becomes a roaming opera singer and bon vivant. Their lives become entangled with their relatives, another set of twins in 2050 living through accelerating climate intensity in the British Isles. When Chad Ramsey is fired from his police investigation job he retains a mysterious DNA connectivity technology that allows him to access his ancestors for brief moments of their real lives, back in time, and attempt to clear Adolf's name from a supposedly false conviction in the 1870's.
Across this already confusing landscape of twins, time travel, and crime are conflicting climate change theories. Adler Beck believes in the Gulf Stream collapse theory which posits the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet combined with the end of a natural solar cycle will result in an Ice Age incrusting Earth in uninhabitable cold. His modern counterpart's story is told not through science, but lived experience, narrating his days of struggling to find food amid heat waves and sand storms, the encroaching deaths of millions of refugees and the collapse of his town into the sea, the collapse of waste, sanitation, and policing, and the deterioration of his own home and livelihood in real-time.
As Chad (modern) connects to Adler (past) we are wound casually through an increasingly "sure" picture that Adler was correct - climate change will be reversed by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Similarly, the past relevatives' names are cleared, dead fathers found, and our modern climate refugees able to move to Norway and take a job with UN at the last moment.... all is well, all ends tidy, and climate change averted, all in one book! If only a single tantalizing ecological event - or in the case of Chad, a phone call from a wealthy benefactor - could so neatly wrap up the anthropological nightmare we have steadily created for ourselves.
The book is driven by a hopeless need for a Hail Mary save. That we be protected from our own worst mistakes, habits, and oversights by omnipotent forces beyond our control.
This small-minded climate change drivel was further mired by dragging passes of irrelevant technological minutiae and long-winded descriptions that advance no plot or character. The consulted nature of attaching several narrative strands together was not well done - Priest botches the possibility of elegantly showing how past and present, science and superstition, truth and mistruth can be reworked and overlaid with one another. Instead, he spends precious pages in tedious descriptions of scenes that go nowhere, pairing this with affectless dialogue and excruciating long scientific passages which were difficult even for someone with my climate science background to digest.
The passages of Chad existing in a 2050 climate scenario were heart-breaking, and the best portion of the novel. The vivid nature of life's everyday details becomes a struggle the reader embodies. Chad and his wife eat, sleep, fix their house, and work - but in an increasingly difficult world, where the house is suffocatingly warm, infrastructure is collapsing, and small daily necessities like batteries hard to come by.
Overall, not a worthy read, though a valiant effort to weave interesting narrative forces and climate fiction potential together.
Expect Me Tomorrow is told across two narrative strands, featuring two sets of identical twins. Adolf and Adler Beck survive a glaciologist father; Adler pursues a career in climate science and Adolf becomes a roaming opera singer and bon vivant. Their lives become entangled with their relatives, another set of twins in 2050 living through accelerating climate intensity in the British Isles. When Chad Ramsey is fired from his police investigation job he retains a mysterious DNA connectivity technology that allows him to access his ancestors for brief moments of their real lives, back in time, and attempt to clear Adolf's name from a supposedly false conviction in the 1870's.
Across this already confusing landscape of twins, time travel, and crime are conflicting climate change theories. Adler Beck believes in the Gulf Stream collapse theory which posits the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet combined with the end of a natural solar cycle will result in an Ice Age incrusting Earth in uninhabitable cold. His modern counterpart's story is told not through science, but lived experience, narrating his days of struggling to find food amid heat waves and sand storms, the encroaching deaths of millions of refugees and the collapse of his town into the sea, the collapse of waste, sanitation, and policing, and the deterioration of his own home and livelihood in real-time.
As Chad (modern) connects to Adler (past) we are wound casually through an increasingly "sure" picture that Adler was correct - climate change will be reversed by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Similarly, the past relevatives' names are cleared, dead fathers found, and our modern climate refugees able to move to Norway and take a job with UN at the last moment.... all is well, all ends tidy, and climate change averted, all in one book! If only a single tantalizing ecological event - or in the case of Chad, a phone call from a wealthy benefactor - could so neatly wrap up the anthropological nightmare we have steadily created for ourselves.
The book is driven by a hopeless need for a Hail Mary save. That we be protected from our own worst mistakes, habits, and oversights by omnipotent forces beyond our control.
This small-minded climate change drivel was further mired by dragging passes of irrelevant technological minutiae and long-winded descriptions that advance no plot or character. The consulted nature of attaching several narrative strands together was not well done - Priest botches the possibility of elegantly showing how past and present, science and superstition, truth and mistruth can be reworked and overlaid with one another. Instead, he spends precious pages in tedious descriptions of scenes that go nowhere, pairing this with affectless dialogue and excruciating long scientific passages which were difficult even for someone with my climate science background to digest.
The passages of Chad existing in a 2050 climate scenario were heart-breaking, and the best portion of the novel. The vivid nature of life's everyday details becomes a struggle the reader embodies. Chad and his wife eat, sleep, fix their house, and work - but in an increasingly difficult world, where the house is suffocatingly warm, infrastructure is collapsing, and small daily necessities like batteries hard to come by.
Overall, not a worthy read, though a valiant effort to weave interesting narrative forces and climate fiction potential together.
owljude's review
adventurous
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
acascadeofbooks's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
qwerq33's review
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
kidicarus64's review
4.0
Another very « usual » Priest when it comes to pacing, style, and tone. This time, the author focuses on climate change and discusses in great details about the hopes and the nightmares. The overall experience is, as « usual », delicious and hypnotising, ending abruptly but in an emotional way.
frithnanth's review
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
jimmypat's review
5.0
This was a clever and multi-layered novel about how people can often shape the facts of a situation to their mindset, rather than looking at all the facts available. At some level, I was wondering where this book was going and it was only in the final 20 pages where I realized that Priest had laid out certain facts throughout the book that illuminated the real story; in fact, you probably could read this book in straightforward fashion and miss the most tantalizing facets of the story. Masterful.
niallharrison's review
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0