August 1, 2022
In a near-future United States, fraught with extreme politics and extreme weather, scientist Tony Pietrus receives a death threat, which ties him to the interlocked fates of an advertising strategist, an eco-terrorist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a religion-besotted former actor, and a determined young activist. Their actions could determine the fate of the nation--and humanity itself. Echoing the structure and sensibility of the author's big-hit debut, Ohio.
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Starred review from October 3, 2022
In this brilliant dystopian epic from Markley (Ohio), spanning from 2013 to 2040, a range of characters attempt to avert catastrophic climate change, sometimes at great personal risk, and with varying degrees of success. There’s geologist Tony Pietrus; climate justice activist Kate Morris; Shane Acosta, a sophisticated ecoterrorist; and Ashir al-Hasan, chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. The plot begins in familiar terrain, with scientists sounding the alarm that time is running out. Speculative elements emerge with the meteoric ascent of Morris, whose organization, A Fierce Blue Fire, has made global warming the sole litmus test for its political support. The charismatic Morris also dreams up investment opportunities to benefit neglected and poverty-stricken regions. Interstitial segments, including a newspaper article written by AI about Shane’s truck bombing of an Ohio power station in 2030, add to the sense of frightening plausibility. Meanwhile, the bureaucratic al-Hasan comments in a memo on the “inanity and profiteering that surround the legislative process,” while Pietrus, whose work on methane clathrates is quietly incorporated into government models, remains divisive and marginalized. Markley makes this anything but didactic; his nuanced characterizations of individuals with different approaches to the existential threat make the perils they encounter feel real as they navigate cover-ups and lies. It’s a disturbing tour de force.
December 1, 2022
A hyper-realistic, alarming vision of the world destabilized by climate change. This sprawling novel, about 900 pages long, covers three decades of American life, beginning in 2013, as partisan divisions widen and the effects of rising global temperatures become more pronounced, and extending to a cataclysmic near future marked by social and ecological collapse. The large cast of characters introduced here includes climate scientists, domestic terrorists, political leaders of various stripes, and a gaggle of regular citizens caught up in the apocalyptic maelstrom. Shifting points of view are set against newspaper articles and government reports as the intricacies of the plot unfold and the dramatic intersection of the central characters' lives is gradually revealed. This is an exhaustively researched book, crammed full of commentary and speculation on contemporary trends: widening wealth gaps, political polarization, the inefficacy of reformist measures to address environmental threats, the blinkered resistance of conservative forces, the inevitability of violent assaults on scapegoats as currents of irrationality pulse through the nation. There are intriguing surprises in this chronicle of accelerating disorder and anomie, and the conclusion rewards those who persevere through the thickets of character development, though overall the novel has difficulty sustaining narrative momentum, and its extraordinary length seems, at last, rather unjustified. A more streamlined story that felt less inclined to bolster its authority with mountains of detail would likely have been more powerful. Nevertheless, the author has produced a highly memorable invention in a character named Kate Morris, a charismatic eco-activist with a ferocious clarity of purpose. Her narrative, taken on its own, is unusually vivid and distills much of what the novel seems to care about most: warning of massive disruptions to our civilization in the decades to come and exploring possibilities for maintaining our humanity as we struggle to manage them. An ambitious rendering of a forbidding future and the public and private challenges that will define it.
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December 1, 2022
Markley's second novel is reminiscent of his first (Ohio, 2018)--ambitious, sprawling, chock full of characters--but all turned up to eleven. Spanning 2013-39, Deluge charts the devastation of unchecked climate change and the continued fracturing of society that comes with it. The story starts with scientist Tony Pietrus, who issues a dire warning that's dismissed as alarmist, and then fans out to a host of other characters: charismatic climate activist Kate Morris; Shane Acosta, founder of an ecoterrorist organization; Keeper, who's fighting drug addiction and struggling to make a living; the Pastor, an actor turned Christian, white supremacist presidential hopeful. As fires, dust bowls, hurricanes, and other startling weather events ramp up, the political elite and their constituents retreat further to the left and right, and the coinciding social terror Markley tracks is all the more upsetting because of its plausibility. Readers would do well to keep the book's multiple viewpoints sorted from the beginning and should know that, with unrelenting doom throughout its 800-plus pages, this is a demanding but worthwhile read.
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Starred review from December 1, 2022
This sprawling epic of climate apocalypse by Markley (his second novel, following Ohio) takes place over a quarter-century, from 2013 to 2037, as extreme heat, fires, and floods rage across the planet. Central among its characters is charismatic, unconventional climate activist Kate Morris, founder of a climate action organization willing to work with whoever will support its goal of saving the planet regardless of their other political positions. That makes her an anathema to the violent ecoterrorists 6Degrees (also known as "the Weathermen," after the 1960s radicals), even as she is also feared by fossil-fuel industry groups who see their profits threatened. As climate change worsens, it leads to an ever more dystopian world, with increasingly destructive storms, worldwide social breakdown, and the concomitant rise of right-wing authoritarians at home and abroad--notably The Pastor, a former actor--turned--end-of-days theocrat whose political movement makes him a strong presidential contender. Meanwhile, activists work feverishly trying to get a bill through Congress to stave off ultimate disaster. VERDICT This is a stunning achievement that may earn a place among dystopian and apocalyptic classics like 1984 and On the Beach. And perhaps most of all, it's an unflinching and utterly compelling call to action to prevent an all-too-possible future.--Lawrence Rungren
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