In the near dystopian future, Rose arrives in the far north of Canada at Camp Zero. She has agreed to work as an escort in the camp to hopefully earn her Korean immigrant mother a home in the utopia that is the floating city. At the same time, Grant, a well to do recent college grad who is trying to make his own name in the world, arrives to work as a professor in the camp. They both soon find out that this camp and the far north is not all they thought it would be.

This book had me hooked from the start. The concept was interesting, the characters were mysterious and complex, and the world building was fabulous.

It’s weird, but I actually loved that we didn’t know a majority of the characters’ names. Having them just called “the barber” or “the engineer” added such a unique quality to the story and almost made the characters feel more grounded in the world.

The story and twists were doled out at the perfect speed as well. They were sparse enough that it made me want to keep reading to find out what was going to happen, but I didn’t have to wait forever to really get deep into the story and secrets of the world. I also thought there was a perfect amount of backstory given. It gave just enough to really understand the world and what these characters were fighting for without bogging down the plot.

For most of the book I did have a hard time connecting the White Alice chapters to the rest of the story. It felt like two separate books to me, but it did all come full circle in the end.

I don’t know if there is going to be a sequel for this one, but I sure hope there is! I definitely would love to spend more time in this world with these interesting characters!

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and statements are my own.

This book was something I’ve never read before and it was definitely worth the read!
You get to dive into a new icy world with, as promised, many plot twists. You basically know nothing at the beginning but get to pick up more and more parts of the story like a puzzle, for example how the different POVs are connected to each other. I loved the setting, I love the three POVs and the very different character types. The ending was definitely unexpected, but really suspense-packed.
I think this book is really unique and no matter if you’re new to science fiction or a long time fan, you’ll love it! The story was well and especially deep developed and I did also mark many nice quotes. However, it was a lot to memorize.
The only thing that I didn’t like that much was how the women bad-mouthed about the men.
I would definitely reread it though!

Camp Zero is a gorgeous debut from an author I'll be keeping an eye on. A mixture of literary and dystopian fiction, this book targets many themes leaving the reader thoughtful ( though sometimes, the book felt like it was trying to do too much with too many themes that many of these conversations fell flat ie the stealing of land — while the privilege of the obnoxiously rich were well-enough explored).

Set in a near future where climate change is quickly eclipsing society and technology becomes ever-more demanding and intrusive of everyone's full attention, the only salvation is in the desolation of northern Canada. Tech CEOs are building settlements up there, and we follow three points of views: Rose who is part of a group of sex workers called "The Blooms," a teacher of construction workers named Grant, and an obscure time era of a previous occupation of an all-female climate research group called "White Alice."

The pacing is haunting, a slow build of tension and a pacing that felt classic in a sense. There is a mystery of direction, of where the story will go and timelines, and of character identities and motivations. You feel the isolation of the setting and the inherit danger of each day.

When it comes to characters, there were some I was very endeared by but many of them seemed to fade into being grouped together in the background. These characters had backstories which explained why they were doing but I still never really got a sense of them beyond their circumstance. I also felt like some of the stances taken thematically were a bit, simplistic.

I think Sterling did a great job with the representation and exploration of sex work though. I was very partial to the White Alice chapters also of the blurred lines between these women in their relationships. There were twists where I had to put down the book and others which felt underutilized and like they should've come sooner. We explore many attempts of building utopias in this dystopian novel and are left pondering who seems to have the right of it — I can see this being a book bringing forth many discussions and opposing opinions,

Because the third act is, a bit disorganized. It rushes this pacing developed and while it is realistic to the world and themes that the book shouldn't close neatly, I do wish we were given a bit more breathing room. Ultimately though, Camp Zero ends on a note that is uncertain but hopeful regardless — and that resilience of humanity in the face of collapse is always a personal favorite of mine within the genre.

Camp Zero is a stunning debut novel from Michelle Min Sterling that explores a dystopian future filled with climate displacement and a collapsing world. The novel follows three narrators: Rose, a woman who has agreed to infiltrate and spy on Camp Zero; Grant, a college professor trying to shed his wealthy family's name who arrives at the same time as Rose; and a group of female scientists in a Cold War-era climate research station.

I quite literally could not put this book down, and managed to speed through it in just under two days. The pace of the story certainly made it a page-turner, and the author's masterful writing explores themes of class, gender, climate change, and migration in a powerful way that will stick with readers.

I'm absolutely expecting this to be deemed one of the best Spring 2023 releases!

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this novel for the majority of it. The author has created a near future world that is plausible while not feeling unoriginal. The characters are intriguing and tension in the story builds throughout. All this being said, I wasn't a fan of the way the author chose to end this story, which kept this from being a great novel for me. The ending was surprising to me and not really in a way that felt clever. Regardless, this is still a solid novel and an enjoyable read that I would still recommend.

This one fell flat for me. It just didn’t have the storytelling that I have found in other books in this genre. I could never connect with the characters or understand their motivations.

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Camp Zero releases April 4, 2023

4.5/5

This debut by Michelle Min Sterling was fascinating. A story where you’ll have to trust the process to see how everything connects, but the pay off in the end is definitely worth it.

Camp Zero is set in the near-future in the year 2050. Themes include climate change, environmental destruction, migration, class and gender inequality, and the things we will do to survive.

Told through three alternating POV — Rose, Grant, and White Alice:

Rose is a biracial daughter to an immigrant Korean woman, and a sex worker. Living and working in the Floating City, she agrees to an assignment at this new developing camp/settlement in the Far North of Canada — Dominion Lake — where she must distract and make sure that Meyer isn’t suspecting of the underlying ruse that Damien has set in place to mine a mineral called dysprosium in order to have the materials to create Flick 2.0. In exchange for this, Rose will gain permanent citizenship to the Floating City as well as housing and income for her displaced mother.

Grant comes from a long lineage of influential family members. In the hopes of separating himself from his past and the Grimley name, he takes a job at the camp as an English tutor. But things aren’t as simplistic as they may seem and his roots may just be ingrained deeper than he expected.

White Alice is a subdivision of the US military; a climate research station in the North, just a two days snowmobile ride away from Dominion Lake.
Originally set up during the Cold War by the Americans, but now eight women are settled here for the foreseeable future and eventually acclimate and learn how to become self sufficient.

The narrative of White Alice was my favourite of them, which made sense in the end knowing the whole picture.
While the start of their timeline isn’t in complete parallel with that of Rose and Grant’s, their paths eventually do merge seamlessly. The build up and history of their time, seclusion, and adaption to life in the North was fascinating.
I loved the style of writing used for this group, how there wasn’t really one clearly named narrator, but instead a collective “us”.

Although fictional, the climate crisis and worries were all too real. I appreciated seeing acknowledgement of land and territories belonging to First Nations and Indigenous peoples as there are current events right now that involve this exact scenario in correlation with oil companies.

The dystopian vibes with the Flick implantations and the Loop + Floating City were a really unique touch.
I can easily see this world being expanded upon in a sequel.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Sterling comes up with next after this memorable debut!!

I really loved the slow build up and that the main character was a sex worker without the author making it her whole personality. The ending left something to be desired for me personally but I can also see how it’s on theme with the world ending and men being the ones to blame. Would have been 5/5 for me if Grant’s POV was completely left out - I know he's supposed to represent the antagonistic wealth but he just felt like a side character to me for most of the book. Overall, a really engaging and thought-provoking read.

“As long as men exist in this world, they’ll do what they can to consolidate their power. We’ll spend one more year here and then return to the same shit world we left behind.”

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling

QUICK SUMMARY 🖊️
In the not so distant future the best place to live will be the North, because of the rising temperatures. In the northern reaches of Canada sits an American base who will do anything to keep their family safe.

FINAL THOUGHTS 💭
First I want to thank @NetGalley & Atria Books for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book jumped out at me when I found out it was based in Canada, being Canadian I always love seeing this. Knowing the author was born in western Canada I had high hopes. Which came crashing down.

The book and story itself are well written, when it’s good it’s good. But the “liberties” the author took with geographical locations took me completely out of the world. When you’re referencing very real places, an Indigenous Territories the geography needs to make sense and it didn’t which annoyed me to no end, honestly ask @curiously.Katt she was the unfortunate recipient of my voice memos. I don’t want to go into anymore detail than this incase others want to read it. But this was a big miss for me.

Another thing was the dogs. Why pit bulls, use some other attack dog. They have enough of a bad wrap, it sucks seeing it portrayed as such in a dystopian.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

I’ve always loved reading books that depict a dystopian future, filled with devastation and chaos. Camp Zero is one such book that caught my attention. Not only did it provide a heart-wrenching narrative, but it also explored complex themes such as gender, class, and climate change.

The story is told from multiple POVs, which gives the reader a chance to explore the different aspects of the camp. Each storyline is unique and interesting, and the way they all connect is simply amazing. The characters are well-developed, and their personalities are explored in-depth, which makes them even more realistic.

What I found most captivating about the book was how it managed to bring together all the different themes and storylines into one cohesive narrative. The ending was simply breathtaking, and it left me with a lot to ponder about. Since finishing the book, I have not been able to stop thinking about it.

Michelle Min Sterling is a great writer, and I am excited to see what she has in store for her readers in her next work. Camp Zero is a must-read for anyone who loves dystopian fiction and wants to explore complex themes in a unique and compelling way.

Early on, I described the feel of this book to a friend as "The Handmaid's Tale" meets "Station Eleven" and after completing it, I feel like that's a pretty accurate reference.

I really enjoyed the various threads of this story and how they wove together. I was curious to learn whether the timelines were concurrent or separated by decades, and enjoyed the ways the author pulled the characters and plots together at the end. Characters felt believable without feeling formulaic, and the setting created a propulsive story.

My mind keeps coming back to the setting and story days after finishing it, which is always a sign of a great read. High marks, Michelle Min Sterling is now on my list of authors to watch.

I appreciated the writing for this dystopian climate change thriller, and when the action was happening, it really had me engaged. I think it got a bit bogged down in flashbacks for my taste, though, and while I was on board with a lot of the thematic content, it was a bit on the nose.
Still, would look for more from this author and would recommend for those who like SF with their conspiracy-esque thriller

Many thanks to NetGalley for a complimentary ebook in exchange for my honest review,

Camp Zero is a an unsettling page turner. In Michelle Min Sterling’s view of 2049, the planet is beset by environmental catastrophes. Parts of America are nearly uninhabitable due to heat, fires, and storms. People are perpetually online thanks to implantable connectivity devices that allow them to escape the realities of every day. In this world, the rich have built havens for themselves, while the poor provide the labor and suffer the worst consequences of generations of ecological carelessness.

Camp Zero is a shadowy project in the arctic regions of Canada. It draws an array of people looking for something: a better life, a different life, a utopian ideal. But no is exactly who they seem and no one’s motives are pure,

I found this to be a chilling and all-too-plausible look at Earth’s near future. Highly recommend.

This took me a hot minute to get into, and it wasn't at all what I was expecting.

There are three POVs there, not just Rose's. All three weave and interweave throughout, told in various tenses. There is the past present of Rose. The present of Grant. The collective we of White Alice.

While I enjoyed the overall message of this climate fiction book, there was just this...I dunno. This sneaking feeling that it was kinda (view spoiler)

Anywho, it's a little different than what the blurb states, and I did like that sex workers were the heroes and main characters, without any of the moralizing or bemoaning of their jobs.

The ending, however, felt both rushed and incomplete and half-realized—where the book shines is the build, the rising tension, the means of living in a world where the most innocuous mistake kills.

I received an ARC from the publisher

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for providing me with a digital ARC of this book!

Camp Zero is a promising work of literary dystopian fiction that interrogates the intersection of gender, socioeconomic class, and climate change in the remote setting of the Canadian Arctic, where the motivations and reasons behind the camp’s creation are more disreputable than they first seem. The story is told from three points of view: Rose, a young woman working as an escort with the hope of securing a future for herself and her mother; Grant, a young man trying to escape his wealthy family background; and White Alice, a group of women tasked with a scientific expedition in the far north of Canada.

Set in the near-future of 2049, the worldbuilding of Camp Zero feels well-grounded both conceptually and visually in how Sterling paints a picture of Earth in the wake of global warming. It integrates a vision of how the worsening climate crisis would impact different groups, particularly from a class standpoint. The Floating City and Meyer’s idea of creating a settlement for Americans in the Canadian Arctic to escape the ravages of the climate crisis feel evocative of the proposals we’ve seen in recent years coming from the uber-rich about space exploration and colonizing the moon. We repeatedly hear and witness the wealthy elite absolve themselves of the consequences of the climate crisis, while characters like Rose and her mother live on the meager scraps left behind and lose everything in the wake of extreme weather events.

I found the worldbuilding and characters extremely compelling—they all feel fully realized and each have their own beliefs and motivations connected to their unique experience within the climate-ravaged world Sterling created. White Alice reminded me in a way of the expedition in Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation with the emphasis on a group of exclusively women and their isolation from the outside world. Their shift over the course of the novel into a narrative of resilience and survival—and their unwavering willingness to kill in order to maintain their home—was fascinating. I also enjoyed Rose as a kind of central protagonist. The more I learned about her backstory and her motivations, I was increasingly rooting for her… not in the sense of rooting for her to successfully complete the task Damien set out for her, but for her to find her own path to freedom.

I think the only real flaw I have with Camp Zero is its somewhat muddled third act. The way these three narratives finally weave together made me so excited, but then I realized I was already about 90% of the way through the book. Grant’s decision to leave camp, the revelation of White Alice, the destruction of the campsite, and Nari’s escape from Meyer all felt a bit rushed. I don’t mind the open ending—given the enormity of their situation and the negligible chance that killing Damien would solve their world’s problems, it’s honestly a solid decision to leave the story there instead of trying to perfectly tie everything up with a bow. I just wish that the third act had more breathing room and was a bit more fleshed out to avoid the weird sense of pacing at the end.

Overall, a great addition to the dystopian genre and I look forward to seeing more from Michelle Min Sterling!

Camp Zero
by Michelle Min Sterling
Fiction Dystopia
NetGalley ARC

Taking place in the future, the world is suffering from climate change, and Rose, along with a few other women, arrives at Camp Zero, a mall in Canada, as a Bloom, to be companions for the men who run the construction a few miles away, which was only a hole in the ground.

At the same time that Rose and the other women arrived, so does Grant, a young man running from his rich father, there to teach the men who are working at the construction site.

Then there is a group of women working at a research station studying climate change.

Seventy-five percent of this book is backstories to the characters' past. For the first few chapters I was interested, but as the flashbacks kept overtaking the present I got bored, and now I regret pushing through this story. The mystery beneath the camp was pointless because it wasn't interesting.

The descriptions are vague, as are the characters, who were flat and they all felt as if they were minor characters. Everything in the present is brushed over, as if the past is what the author wanted to write about, and what was going on in the present, what the story was supposed to be about, was a subplot that wasn't important, but more of an afterthought.

The title of this book gives away how many stars I want to give it, but to submit my review...

1 Star

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling is not at all what I was expecting but I can say that I liked it! A vision of a future that I had not yet thought of, however, it doesn't feel that far off.

Michelle Min Sterling intertwines three point of views that consolidate to one ending. The point of views are well distinguished with strong character development. I found White Alice to be my favorite of the three to read but the twists and turns is what truly had me hooked. I had no idea how the author planned to tie things together, but she did so expertly. My only complaint is that everything ended rather abruptly and I didn't understand the sense of urgency with the ending. In fact, I'm still feeling unsettled and left wondering "is that it?"

All in all, I enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading more of Michelle Min Sterling.

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling is about a post-climate destroyed world where the south is unbearably hot and the north unbearably cold. Oceans have taken over coastal lands and wild natural disasters make it dangerous to live. Rose (FMC) is from the Floating City. A human-made city that is protected from climate change. When she is given a deal to protect her mother, Rose agrees to go north to Lake Dominion in hopes to distract a man named Meyer, who is an architect of creating sustainable cities (such as the floating city) and uncover his plans.

I feel like this book is hard to review. I really enjoyed the writing, dual points of view, the characters, and the idea behind the story. That being said, it was such a slow book and I really struggled to read my way through it. I can usually finish books in three or four days, but this book took me four weeks.

I really liked the characters that were living at White Alice. They were unique and everytime the story went to that point of view I got excited and was lost in the story. However, when the story flipped to Grant and sometimes Rose, I lost interest.

The post-climate ravaged world and the mystery of the north and what in the world the people are digging for and how White Alice fits into the people living at Dominion Lake ultimately kept me from not finishing this book. The premise is really, really cool and the writing style was fantastic. I also really liked when all the stories and timelines came together at the end. It just needed a little more action or revelations along the way to keep the reader turning the pages.

If you’re interested in climate change and enjoy post-apocalyptic books, this one may be for you!

Thank you @netgalley and Atria Books for the e-arc of Camp Zero. Look for this book on shelves April 4th 2023!

This book was a slog for me. The beginning was super slow and the ending was pretty abrupt. The plot was also confusing at times with relatively unlikable characters. I think the author was going for a dystopian novel with cultural commentary, but it just didn't quite work for me. Some people may love this one, but it wasn't my cup of tea. Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for the ARC!