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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
funny
hopeful
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gun violence, Hate crime, Death of parent
Minor: Grief, Pandemic/Epidemic
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I recently started requesting galleys at Net Galley. It's a site where you can download and read books before they are published in return for giving an honest review. It helps publishers to build reviews for books before they come out. I am a big fan of Cory Doctorow and requested to read The Lost Cause, due to be published on November 14. I finished it today, so here is my brief review.
The story takes place about thirty years in our future. Climate change has continued to wreak havoc on the world. A new generation has grown up knowing nothing of a time before climate change. There has been a two-term president who signed into law a Green New Deal that has started to address the issues of climate change for real. This is followed by a less effective president of the same party and then a new president after who starts to turn things back. This is where the story begins
The protagonist is a young man named Brooks just graduating high school whose idealist parents died in pandemic when he was eight. He shares their ideals. His grandfather does not. He belongs to a Maga Club whose members are opposed to all the changes and love the new president. When internally displaced migrants from another city come to Brooks' hometown of Burbank, Brooks and his friends clash with the Maga Club folks.
I really enjoyed this book. It had some cheesy romance, a little bit of political polemics, a whole lot of liberal ideals, and even some food descriptions that made my mouth water. It shows a view of how we might overcome climate change in the near future despite people who deny it happening and clinging to old ways. Both fun and political. One of the author's better books.
My rating: 4/5
challenging
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A real solarpunk book that focuses on lots of solutions to overwhelming problems. Doctorow's usual style: the dialogue is a little strained and some of the characters are a little good to be true, but the plot is fun and the problems seem forecast only slightly into our future. This has a similar feel to Walkaway, and if you liked that or other Doctorow novels, this is more of the same.
This is near future sci-fi; a thoughtful examination of what might be in store for our society as recent political and social divisions widen. The state of the world is showcased through the lens of a young man and his city (Burbank, CA to be specific). While there is a lot to ponder with the potentially prescient nature of the narrative, there isn’t enough of an emotional core to overcome the feeling that it’s all too soon, too political and too depressing to read right now.
There have been a number of books over the last few years engaging with the question of what a post-climate-emergency world will look like; I think of [b:The Ministry for the Future|50998056|The Ministry for the Future|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1668935201l/50998056._SY75_.jpg|75844661], [b:A Half-Built Garden|58353189|A Half-Built Garden|Ruthanna Emrys|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632240198l/58353189._SY75_.jpg|64976835], [b:The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047|27064345|The Mandibles A Family, 2029–2047|Lionel Shriver|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461532661l/27064345._SY75_.jpg|46892513], and Doctorow's own [b:Walkaway|40604388|Walkaway|Cory Doctorow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1529601317l/40604388._SY75_.jpg|50573549]. Compared to those, this feels like it's aimed at a fundamentally different audience, specifically at the same younger audience that [b:Little Brother|954674|Little Brother (Little Brother, #1)|Cory Doctorow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349673129l/954674._SY75_.jpg|939584] was. Maybe it's because I read Little Brother when I was a teenager and I'm rather older now, and maybe it's because I've read more political philosophy now, but I found the reading experience of this book deeply frustrating, which was a shame because I think there's a lot of really great worldbuilding in here and another editing pass might have been all it needed.
First, the good. While the above books tended to look more at technological, financial, and process aspects of societal change, The Lost Causes really dives deep into cultural aspects, and I think it's all the stronger for that. I totally believe Doctorow's imaginings of what a Maga cultural movement (now reduced to a proper noun, not an acronym, and stripped of any present-day political figures) might look like and how people who are today protesting against basic science with things like pandemic management might be behaving when the planet is on fire. I liked the depiction of the psychology of these movements, the refusal to either play up their cool factor or downplay the very real damage they do. These days, this is a group of people that statistically died at a higher rate in COVID due to rejection of masks and vaccines; of course they're going to be doing themselves harm from climate reasons in the future.
Additionally, I have a particular interest in the way that technology terminology does or does not date a book; by referring to all electronics as just "screens," Doctorow does a good job of making them timeless, acknowledging that they're increasingly become interchangeable. By avoiding reference to specific messaging platforms or social media feeds (and constructing a world in which social media seems to be federated), this feels like it isn't going to be immediately out of date.
But then we get to my complaints, which are largely about characterisation and dialogue. Our protagonist is Brooks, an 18/19 year old who is just graduating high school at the start of the book. He refers to himself as queer/pansexual, but then proceeds to effectively exclusively get horny for the attractive young women in his life (to the point where every time a new one of them is introduced, there's an evaluation of whether or not they are a romantic prospect); this isn't inherently a problem, except that the way his desire to be around those women for romantic purposes interacts with his desire to be around them for activism purposes (and the fact that there's a runner about him mixing up Ethiopians and Eritreans) makes the activism feel weirdly performative. Brooks is impulsive, which again is fine in theory, but it feels more like Doctorow is applying characteristics to him to demonstrate immaturity rather than having a proper understanding of his mind. My comparison here is Marcus Yallow, the protagonist of Little Brother, who I remember reading and loving when I was about the age that he was in the story. In comparison, Brooks feels a little more thinly and inconsistently characterised, his traumatic history not always perfectly integrated with the rest of his character. The result of this was that he just annoyed me, and I didn't like him enough for that to be a motivation to continue reading.
Brooks's 2-3 attractive female friends are given various degrees of Manic Pixie Dreamgirl (I don't think I can come up with a proper description of the personality of the one that eventually becomes his partner, apart from "flawless, always correct badass") and seem to serve the role of conversation partner for didactic dialogue in which Doctorow can hammer out ideas and have Brooks either explain or be explained to. I'm certainly not opposed to a didactic dialogue in a fiction novel (hell, [b:Anathem|2845024|Anathem|Neal Stephenson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488349209l/2845024._SX50_.jpg|6163095] is one of my favourite novels), but I found that the integration of this with romantic interactions served to weaken both. The conversation ended up feeling stilted, artificial, and entirely unlike a 19-year-old, and so weakened both the romantic connections and the ability to convey the ideas.
I've not mentioned the plot much here, and that's because there wasn't a huge amount. I'm also not sure that there needed to be: there was just enough to hang the ideas on, and plenty of danger to keep up a sense of tension at the requisite moments. This book seems like it wants to do for climate change what Little Brother did for cybersecurity, and I think it might, though as I am no longer of the age I was when I read that book, I can't really know for sure. If I were recommending a climate crisis book to a teenager, I very well might recommend this one. However, if I was recommending one to an adult, I think I would be more likely to recommend Doctorow's other similar work, Walkaway. This was a shame; I nearly DNF'ed the book at 45% of the way through out of frustration at the dialogue, but kept going because I wanted to like it so much. This book has some great ideas in places that we as a society need to have great ideas, and so I pushed through.
First, the good. While the above books tended to look more at technological, financial, and process aspects of societal change, The Lost Causes really dives deep into cultural aspects, and I think it's all the stronger for that. I totally believe Doctorow's imaginings of what a Maga cultural movement (now reduced to a proper noun, not an acronym, and stripped of any present-day political figures) might look like and how people who are today protesting against basic science with things like pandemic management might be behaving when the planet is on fire. I liked the depiction of the psychology of these movements, the refusal to either play up their cool factor or downplay the very real damage they do. These days, this is a group of people that statistically died at a higher rate in COVID due to rejection of masks and vaccines; of course they're going to be doing themselves harm from climate reasons in the future.
Additionally, I have a particular interest in the way that technology terminology does or does not date a book; by referring to all electronics as just "screens," Doctorow does a good job of making them timeless, acknowledging that they're increasingly become interchangeable. By avoiding reference to specific messaging platforms or social media feeds (and constructing a world in which social media seems to be federated), this feels like it isn't going to be immediately out of date.
But then we get to my complaints, which are largely about characterisation and dialogue. Our protagonist is Brooks, an 18/19 year old who is just graduating high school at the start of the book. He refers to himself as queer/pansexual, but then proceeds to effectively exclusively get horny for the attractive young women in his life (to the point where every time a new one of them is introduced, there's an evaluation of whether or not they are a romantic prospect); this isn't inherently a problem, except that the way his desire to be around those women for romantic purposes interacts with his desire to be around them for activism purposes (and the fact that there's a runner about him mixing up Ethiopians and Eritreans) makes the activism feel weirdly performative. Brooks is impulsive, which again is fine in theory, but it feels more like Doctorow is applying characteristics to him to demonstrate immaturity rather than having a proper understanding of his mind. My comparison here is Marcus Yallow, the protagonist of Little Brother, who I remember reading and loving when I was about the age that he was in the story. In comparison, Brooks feels a little more thinly and inconsistently characterised, his traumatic history not always perfectly integrated with the rest of his character. The result of this was that he just annoyed me, and I didn't like him enough for that to be a motivation to continue reading.
Brooks's 2-3 attractive female friends are given various degrees of Manic Pixie Dreamgirl (I don't think I can come up with a proper description of the personality of the one that eventually becomes his partner, apart from "flawless, always correct badass") and seem to serve the role of conversation partner for didactic dialogue in which Doctorow can hammer out ideas and have Brooks either explain or be explained to. I'm certainly not opposed to a didactic dialogue in a fiction novel (hell, [b:Anathem|2845024|Anathem|Neal Stephenson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488349209l/2845024._SX50_.jpg|6163095] is one of my favourite novels), but I found that the integration of this with romantic interactions served to weaken both. The conversation ended up feeling stilted, artificial, and entirely unlike a 19-year-old, and so weakened both the romantic connections and the ability to convey the ideas.
I've not mentioned the plot much here, and that's because there wasn't a huge amount. I'm also not sure that there needed to be: there was just enough to hang the ideas on, and plenty of danger to keep up a sense of tension at the requisite moments. This book seems like it wants to do for climate change what Little Brother did for cybersecurity, and I think it might, though as I am no longer of the age I was when I read that book, I can't really know for sure. If I were recommending a climate crisis book to a teenager, I very well might recommend this one. However, if I was recommending one to an adult, I think I would be more likely to recommend Doctorow's other similar work, Walkaway. This was a shame; I nearly DNF'ed the book at 45% of the way through out of frustration at the dialogue, but kept going because I wanted to like it so much. This book has some great ideas in places that we as a society need to have great ideas, and so I pushed through.