The year is 2082. Climate collapse, famine and war have left the world in ruins. In the shadow of the Alpha-Omega regime – descendants of the super-rich architects of disaster – sixteen-year-old Boo Ashworth and her uncle risk everything to save what’s left of human knowledge, hiding the last surviving books in a secret library beneath the streets of Hobart.
But Boo has a secret of her own: an astonishing ability to memorise entire texts with perfect recall. When the library is discovered and destroyed, she’s forced to flee – armed with nothing but the stories she carries in her mind, and a growing understanding of her family’s true past.
Hunted and alone, and with the help of some unlikely allies, she must fight to save her loved ones – and bring hope to a broken world.
Spanning three generations before, during and after the fall, The Hope is the shattering conclusion to Paul E. Hardisty’s critically acclaimed climate-emergency trilogy – a devastating, visionary thriller that dares to imagine the possibility of redemption in the face of near-total collapse. In a dying world, it asks the most urgent question of all: what if there’s still time?
It is my pleasure to be hosting the blog tour for The Hope by Paul E. Hardisty today. Many thanks to Orenda Books for my advance copy of the novel and to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour.
With the recent reports of Trump's demands regarding ownership of Greenland dominating the news, reading The Hope felt even more unnervingly prescient and plausible. Indeed, there is mention of a US President's full-scale invasion of the island after his attempt to purchase it fails… This final book in Paul E. Hardisty's climate-emergency series, concludes a thought-provoking, decades-spanning story which follows David 'Teacher' Ashworth's tale of forced relocation and later escape in The Forcing and his stepson, Kweku's account in The Descent which serves as both a prequel and sequel to those events. The Hope is narrated by Becky (known to all as Boo), Teacher's granddaughter and Kweku's niece and as its title indicates, suggests some way back for that world and perhaps a way for ours to avoid the nightmare we still seem to be heading towards.
Returning readers will recall Kweku's rescue of the young Becky in The Descent; since then the family – Kweku, his wife Julie, son, Leo, and Boo – have settled in Hobart, alongside newcomers to the series, Raphael and Boy. Boo is now sixteen and helps her family look after the secret library of salvaged books they maintain. It comes as no surprise to discover that books have been banned; despotic regimes have a long history of trying to withhold knowledge from the populace and here the eventual outcome of an attack on education, coupled with sustained, divisive mis and disinformation through governments, traditional and social media is explored to devastating effect.
The early chapters of The Hope underline just how perilous their life is. Leo's anger and need for action drives a wedge between himself and his father, in spite of their concerns for the desperately ill Julie. Meanwhile, as a young woman Boo herself is particularly at risk and like everyone, fears the Eminence, their unseen leader who is reported to have a vast harem of women, hundreds of children and a propensity towards extreme, sadistic violence. Paul E. Hardisty vividly describes this shattered, dangerous world and while obviously fiction, both the physical environment and human response to it is only too believable.
Boo's account of the sudden, rapid changes to her life is terrifying but throughout it all she maintains her love of literature. She has an extraordinary ability to memorise and perfectly recall everything she reads and in a novel which is often so unsettling, there is some comfort to be found in being reminded of the importance of the written word. It's through books that we understand the world and those in it, including ourselves, and Boo's empathetic reactions to all she endures in The Hope are a beautiful, powerful emphasis of that.
The narrative is shared between Boo's own fight for survival and Kweku's manuscript which she at first furtively reads before being forced to rescue it when the library is destroyed, leaving her alone and desperately vulnerable. She learns more about the dreadful years of inaction and wanton destruction leading up to the events in The Forcing and the cataclysmic actions which took place even after the end of the Repudiation. It is these parts of the novel which are arguably the most sobering as they reflect so much of what is happening in our world right now; bitter identity politics, needless divisions, billionaires overseeing the killing of programmes designed to help the poor, the blaming of minorities and immigrants, the erosion of women's rights, climate change being dismissed as propaganda, history being rewritten to suit the narrative... Paul E. Hardisty's exploration of the potential – perhaps even probable – consequences of our own apathy, ignorance and manipulated anger is chillingly compelling.
However, this is The Hope and so there is also a path towards redemption outlined here and while it means renewal for these fictional characters, it may also offer us a way of avoiding our own descent into a dystopian nightmare. One trilogy alone can't change the world but this exceptional tale both warns and reassures us that while we still have books to educate, enlighten and connect us, we still have hope. A stunning conclusion to an outstanding trilogy, The Hope is an unforgettable read and one I cannot recommend highly enough.
The Hope is published by Orenda Books and can be ordered from their website, further purchasing links can be found here.
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