https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2023/03/2023037-trials-of-koli-m-r-carey.html ( )

Generally this is a well written book. I find the trans theme out of place. It seems to me that when people are focused on survival, "transing" would be inappropriate. This theme did not fit into the rest of the story in this book. The trans theme seemed forced in this specific futuristic apocalyptical story. ( )

Advance copy from NetGalley

From the first sentence, I snuggled right back in to Koli’s voice. His unusual grammar and vocabulary add a comfortable rhythm to his confidential tone to create a feeling of sitting around a campfire while a good storyteller spins yarns. The addition of Spinner’s POV in this volume enriched the story in ways I wasn’t expecting, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the final book in the trilogy.

With so many dystopian novels out there, it’s easy to get dystopia fatigue, and maybe now in 2020, the last thing anyone wants is dystopian fiction. But Carey has an incredible imagination, and this is far from standard fare. Without realizing it, I was drawn into the characters’ perspectives and started reacting to new obstacles in the context of their world rather than mine.

Really great storytelling—I’ll be recommending this trilogy a lot to library patrons. ( )

Last time we saw Koli, he had decided to go to London in an attempt to try to find more people to expand the gene pool (and thus helping humanity survive). Not that he really understands how things work but that much he understands.

The second book in the trilogy opens where the first stopped - Koli, Ursala, Cup (who is about to hit puberty and that will be a big problem considering that it is the wrong type of puberty), Monono (who is now a complete AI) and the drudge are on their way south, Koli chasing his plan, Ursala trying to find the source of the signal that keeps coming from somewhere in the London area.

And off they are. But England is not a park - between the beasts, the people and trees, it is a dangerous place. We get to see a lot more of the countryside, learn a lot about what happened and how everything ended up like that. Trying to figure out what exactly they are seeing and where exactly they are is a part of the story for the reader - it is irrelevant for the understanding of the story but it grounds the story into its location. Plus it is fun working it out.

It is a rough journey - the Half-Ax soldiers really do not like people crossing their territory, the roads are all but gone and the trees are always there, ready to eat anyone who gets anywhere near them while the sun is shining (it is a good thing that it is already autumn and that it is England after all - a bit sunnier than it is now but still, England is England). And then our travelers find a village, Many Fishes, on the edge of the ocean - with the waters going higher, the Thames valley looks a bit differently from how anyone expected. But the signal is still there - somewhere in the water so the next stage of the trip is all set.

Many Fishes is different from Mythen Rood in a lot of ways - but it has the same problems - babies are not being born as often as before and it barely survives against nature. And even in these conditions, just as back in Mythen Rood, the rulers are ready to cheat and worse to keep their power. Humanity can be on the brink of extinction but human nature had not changed much.

While the first book was Koli's diary (written years later), this one adds a new narrator - Spinner, the childhood friend of Koli who we last saw in Mythen Rood, on her wedding day, when Koli decided to show the tech he managed to get to work (and in the process became a problem for the ruling family). She spends a few chapters catching up on the days before the wedding (and while we know the story, it is a bit different - Koli had always been an unreliable narrator but so is Spinner so the differences probably need to split in the middle) and then moves into the story we never saw - what happened after Koli was first incarcerated and then kicked out.

I'd admit that I did not think about what happened to the village once Koli was out of there - it was Koli's story and it looked like a stage for setting it, not really a place one should care about. But there were a lot more people there besides Koli so catching up with them actually helps the story - it shows even more clearly how shielded Koli had been and how different the walled village is from the world. Especially in the later chapters, where we see Many Fishes and Mythen Rood in subsequent parts, you can see how humanity still tries to survive - despite the world trying to kill them all. Plus seeing some of the same places that Koli saw on his path from Spinner's eyes adds another layer to the story.

A few more random things:
- There are no books. None at all. And the population had forgotten how to read and write. This did not strike me as unusual but it should have - no matter what happened, something should have survived. It took Monono to mention it for it to click for me - someone must have made a conscious effort for that to happen.
- Spinner's storytelling voice, especially with all the extra knowledge that she gets (it is confusing at the start because she should be talking in a style closer to Koli's than she does but the story does explain how and why the style is different) contrasted with Koli's (and was a lot easier to read - my brain is still trying to correct any sentence that Koli writes). Not that Spinner's is clean from oddities but it is still much closer to English of today.

Off to the next book. As seem to be the case lately, the third one is longer than the previous 2 books. I really hope that Carey manages to pull it off and close the story cleanly. It is a fascinating world.

PS: Don't even try to read one before you read the first one. ( )

Man I'm just zipping through this trilogy...now I have to wait until March to read the next one!
I like getting to hear Spinner's perspective in this one - it's helping me to understand Koli a bit better too. He truly is an oblivious do-gooder. I'm glad Spinner's getting fleshed out more too, in the last book she did just seem like a personality-less prize that Koli and his friend were sort of competing over.
I'm also interested in the idea of being crossed - trans in our terminology. It seems like humans gon human, because there are some groups/villages who will say you're not normal and will try to convert you back to being "normal", and some who are cool with it and feel like it's just another way that people can be. ( )