I'm very sorry to say that I simply didn't enjoying reading The Free People's Village. The premise really drew me to this book, and I usually find myself loving 'What If?' books where a small historical change balloons into a radically different world. That being said, I just didn't feel engaged in the story or characters at all. To try and be a little more specific, my main gripe was with a lack of character development, which left each character feeling flat and unimaginative for me. It must be said that the traits surrounding gender were explored very well, but I can't help but feel that this was done to the detriment of every other aspect of character development, which left them feeling quite two-dimensional. I'm really happy to see other reviewers connected with this book much better than I did - it seems this one was just not for me. Regardless, I am very grateful to the publisher for sending me a reading copy.

The Free People’s Village is a heavy, immersive read that made me feel equal parts anger, sadness, pride, hope, and cringe. I get the sense that evoking each of those feelings was intentional.

The plot unfolds in an alternate timeline in which Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election and declared a “War on Climate Change.” As a policy researcher, I was so impressed by how Sim Kern revealed what can go wrong in the implementation of liberal policies — like rich people abusing the carbon tax system and greenwashing galore — and how the Democratic platform on climate change is totally insufficient to tackle environmental racism and imperialism. In fact, this story shows how the “war” on climate change could be weaponized in very conventional ways against people of the global majority. The fact that climate policies in this story were used to further expand the scope of policing also felt chillingly realistic.

The coalition of organizations, activists, homeless folks, and others who made up the Free People’s Village seemed very real as well. I loved Kern’s depiction of the boring and mundane aspects of organizing (figuring out how often to empty the port-a-potties is something I’ve had to do and didn’t care to remember, lol) plus the circular, mind-numbing infighting that is inevitable in any long-term organizing effort. Around the middle of the story, there’s an inciting incident when the movement fractures into very different tactics — the secrecy, guilt, and political questions around this incident were really compelling.

I also appreciated the treatment of SA in this book. Rape culture and flimsy restorative justice responses to violence within activist spaces are way more typical than many organizers want to acknowledge. Not including some mention of sexual violence in an encampment setting would’ve felt like a major omission, but it didn’t feel perfunctory as a plot line either. All these examples highlight Kern’s explorations of power dynamics throughout the book: between landlords and tenants, cops and citizens, people with criminal records and those without, Black & Indigenous organizers and white voyeurs, cis and trans people, etc. The depiction of the technologies and media also seemed true to life; in many ways, this book felt like a fiction analog to Zeynep Tufekci’s “Twitter and Tear Gas.”

Now for the aspects that will be unappealing to some readers. The first-person POV of the white main character, Maddie, is cringeworthy more often than not. The cringe factor is intentional, as Maddie is a young white teacher and baby activist entering Black-led organizing spaces for the first time, and she messes up a lot in the process. I thought the author did a pretty good job of not making this a white savior story, though there were times Maddie could’ve taken more ownership of her actions without endless coaching from Black and brown people. Maddie participates in some actions but repeatedly chickens out and mostly does grunt work while her friends and bandmates do the more high-profile leadership work. Even though her inner thoughts are painful to read, I think her perspective will resonate with people. Some readers might also be turned off by the didactic tone of the book. Personally, I don’t mind heavy-handed social commentary in fiction and thought it made sense to learn fundamental theories and principles through Maddie’s naive POV.

Overall, this was a great read that left me with a lot to think about. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy.

Thank you, NetGalley, Levine Querido, and Sim Kern for the e-ARC. The opinions below are my own.

Imagine a world where Al Gore won is a great premise. The promise of this book is to explore a social movement, the relationships within it, and the impact it has on its participants. While it did that, I had some major issues with the story that I couldn't shake.

Maddie is a young 20 something, divorced, ex-Catholic teacher. She's in a band based out of a crusty band house owned by a white dude in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The white dude in question is her boyfriend. She has a crush on her bandmate, Red (Xe, xim, xir). The drama. When a new hyperway is threatening the neighborhood, Maddie joins the local organizers to save the neighborhood. The story follows the arcs of the relationship and the movement.

I liked how Kern envisioned the alternative timeline. The impact of green washing on poor Black and brown people. I loved how real the coalition of organizations felt. I particularly appreciated the inclusion of Native people in Texas. I, like Maddie, was taught these people were "extinct." I also liked the setting. It really felt like Houston and a nasty band house. I loved getting to know the other characters through Maddie.

There were some issues with pacing, and I don't tend to like books with lots of heavy foreshadowing. My biggest issue was the choice to enter Maddie in a story about Black and brown people. At every turn, she was coached, mentored, loved, and chastised by Black and brown people.

It turned into a huge "magical, wise global majority mentorship" trope. MINOR SPOILER The author even acknowledges it right at the end during a conversation with Shayna. When Maddie is like 'look at me, crying and getting comfort from you a Black woman', and Shayna is like 'we're friends...not strangers on the internet.' It was a little late for me.

Every relationship Maddie has taught her something, and the entire story served as Maddie's teaching tool. It was like reading Babel or Yellowface without Letty and June being unsympathetic characters.

Maddie made mistakes I've made, but the story expects the community to reform her not for her to do it herself. In the author's note, Kern thanks one sensitivity reader. Given the intersectional nature of the story the book wanted to tell, it needed more, including from an asthmatic.

Final thoughts: this book wasn't for me. It's a compelling story. I know it will find its readers. I'm just not one of them.

Powerful kick in the guts that I couldn't put down.

Maddy was a fun POV to read. I say fun as in you’ll hate her, but also see some of yourself in her and then gag when she says something ignorant because you may or may not have been there yourself as a 20 something year old.

Loved that the worlds climate issues have ‘been solved’ but really the rich just keep getting richer while throwing out old working appliances then blame poor for the state of the world. So much of what goes on in this book mirrors our current society. Because I can’t afford a house I can’t have solar panels, so my energy bills and my energy footprint is higher than a rich persons....

Can feel preachy at times, but to be expected due to the subject matter and the case of the MC being an ignorant young white woman who is constantly tripping over herself.

I felt the ending dragged on a bit. After the crescendo the ending felt like a 50pg epilogue.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC.

4.5/5 stars

This is a heavy book, but it's well worth the read.

There is a big theme in the main character Maddie experiencing that feeling of 'what if' she had done x differently. And of course the answer is that A) we can't change the past and B)such minute things that happen really don't make a difference long term. I found the point of this book to be that anything that has happened in the past if changed (Al Gore winning for example) wouldn't have made any real difference in terms of where we are sociopolitically today. Because we live in a white supremacist capitalistic society and those oppressive societal structures need to be completely removed before society as a whole could drastically change for the largest group of people worldwide. We individually can make certain choices and work together to make change, but ultimate it's these oppressive power structures which keep our society stagnant.

I thought the themes of greenwashing (aka furthering capitalism through consumerism) were so realistic. This captured what it's like to be a white woman involved in activism so well. How there are so many cringe moments when you are trying to help and learn, and sometimes you just get it wrong. It's a rather bleak outlook, but the ending does sew some seeds of optimism and inspiration (the mycelium quote blew my mind).

I know I'll be thinking about this book for a long time and recommending it to a lot of people.

Thank you Netgalley and Sim Kern for the ARC!


CONTENT WARNINGS:
Graphic: Drug use, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Police brutality, Alcoholism, Death, and Racism

Moderate: Emotional abuse, War, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Grief, Deadnaming, and Rape

Minor: Transphobia

I was very excited to read this book after seeing the author talk about it in a tiktok and got a e-arc off of NetGalley. Sadly, my excitement didn’t last and I found it quite a slog to go through. Though there was a lot of diverse characters, all of them felt very flat and two-dimensional. The book wanted to talk about so many leftist topics that are all interesting to read about, but too many to the point that the book doesn’t have the time to go into enough detail to get a full view of them. It felt more like getting lectured at by the most annoying leftist you know, cut between drama of characters I don’t know enough to care about.

The main character Maddie’s white guilt victim complex gets annoying to the point of tedium. In her mind, Maddie others herself from any group of non white people she interacts with, feeling like an outsider basically any time she talks to anyone that isn’t white which is the majority of interactions she has.

I had high hopes but the execution was disappointing.

I still don’t really have the words to explain how incredible this book was and how much I loved it. It was truly captivating. There is a romance subplot to this book, but that is not the focus. Free People’s Village is set in an alternate 2020 America in the midst of the War on Climate. This book is a dystopian allegory. Environmental racism and gentrification are two huge arcs in the storyline. It is not a light or easy read. It covers intense and heavy topics and there are parts of the story that might be hard to read for some (trigger warnings at the bottom).

This story isn’t just about protest, it’s about revolution. About what it takes to start a revolution. And the risks that come with being involved, especially if you aren’t white. It’s about the resiliency of humanity and power we can have when we come together. Kern tackled topics like capitalism and communism. Police brutality and racial profiling. Gentrification. Activism. The importance of unlearning the lies we’ve been taught and learning about our real history.

Maddie is not your typical MC/narrator. She is not the heroine or even anti-hero of this story. She is simply telling us the story of what happened at the Free People’s Village from her perspective. Maddie has so much growth as a character in this story. She starts from a place of selfishness and ignorance but begins to educate herself about history and politics and all manner of things. I love that while this story was told from the perspective of a white character, the story did not center whiteness. In fact, there were constant moves to decenter whiteness throughout. There is also SO MUCH representation in this book - BIPOC, trans, non-binary, and all kinds of queerness.

Free People’s Village was powerful and heart wrenching and beautiful and eye opening and just amazing. This book will both call you out and call you to action. It will challenge and inspire you. Simply put, this book was phenomenal!

Thank you NetGalley, Sim Kern, and Levine Querido for the ARC!

TW: drug/alcohol use, addiction, overdose, rape/sexual assault, death, violence, religious trauma, suicide/suicidal ideation, racism, homophobia, transphobia (Not all of these things appear on the page in graphic detail. Some are just mentioned. Some are past things that are talked about. Some are more prevalent parts of the story line.)

Well paced and full of detail. Claustrophobic and thrilling I felt like I was right inside of the book.
Thank you Netgalley for an awesome arc in exchange for my honest opinion

Both this book’s greatest strength and its unfortunate handicap is it’s realism. In the best solarpunk fashion, it takes a hard look at a lot of ugly truths in the world, including the nuances of conflicting ideologies and approaches in a complicated setting. It gives us an MC whose involvement is inherently believable - she’s not chosen or special or even particularly brave, she’s just present. In the beginning her goals align with the overarching mission, so she tags along, and in doing so she starts taking steps toward making herself better. It’s inspirational for common people who might want to help, but don’t have the resources or personality to be centerpieces/linchpins in a movement. As much as you sometimes berate her for her choices, you have to ask yourself: Wouldn’t I do the same thing?

Because this book is dedicated to discussing an enormous variety of society’s ills (likely too many, especially for a single book), it does come off pretty preachy. I don’t know that there’s any way to avoid it, given the subject matter, but unfortunately it does get exhausting by the end. It gives you a lot to think about though, and I would recommend it to certain people with some caveats.

The Free People’s Village is a book that follows our main character, Maggie Ryan, as she recounts a time when she and her friends attempt to stop the city of Houston from building an all new hyperway (an electromagnet highway) through the lower income housing and predominantly black neighborhood of the city. I really wanted to love this book. The message of the book was great, however I feel the story wasn’t greatly executed. This book could’ve been two hundred pages shorter and I feel it would’ve had a similar outcome. I wanted to love all of the characters but they lacked growth and depth. The main character made me upset with the choices that were made and the overall reaction to some of the actions taking place in the story. I enjoyed the cast as a whole. There is a great amount of diversity in their ethnicities and sexualities which was new for me! Gestas was my favorite character and someone I could see myself being friends with. Overall, I understood the message but it fell flat for me. I think people should definitely give this book a chance especially if it falls within their preferred genre.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
This book is heavy, but an important read. It hits on many current sociopolitical issues and I appreciated the topic covered.

This story takes place in an alternate timeline where Al Gore had won the 2000 USA presidential election and declared a War on Climate Change. Prior to the 2020 election Maddie is going through her life as teacher at a predominantly Black school by day and a guitarist of a queer punk band by night. Initially she is just trying to keep her band together and hopes to get closer to one of the band members, but as a gentrification project threaten the ward that she teaches in and where her band resides her focus shifts. This takes her on a journey to try to stand up for the communities impacted by a project that will only benefit the wealthy white communities, she gets involved with the Save the Eight, a Black-led organization that mobilizes stand up against social injustices. This is where she stars to pay attention to her white privilege, the white supremacist tendencies that she was raised with, and how she has been part of the harm to her community all along.

She goes through stages of discomfort and encounters learning opportunities. The situations are not always handled perfectly, but I think this is where as a reader we can learn from that perspective. It is ok to be uncomfortable, not be defensive, to know we don’t have to be perfect from the start, and acknowledge it and do better the next time. Change is gradual and awareness is the first step towards action.

Honestly, it was hard to read the parts where the MC struggled, but those situations allowed for me to dig deeper personally and question what I have been socially conditioned to and the harm behind all of it. I know that I have further work to do especially when it comes to next steps of action and more education, but I think the book touched on a lot of important topics that I hope resonates with others and encourages them on their path of learning and action.

Thank you to NetGalley, Levine Querido, and Sim Kern for this ARC.

Brilliantly navigated a dystopian possible future along with the power of activism and revolution. I thought Maddie's subversion of the white savior trope was a unique perspective for the story to be told, and startlingly relevant with the growing prevalence of detached Internet activism. The ending was especially hopeful and powerful.

The Free People's Village is an interesting book to pick up if you enjoy alternate timeline/dystopian books. The first part of the book takes a bit to get into but it's definitely worth sticking it out. Also, the nonfiction book recommendations mentioned in The Free People's Village are 100% worth checking out!

I picked up an early copy of this book during Trans Rights readathon and because the author was out there doing great things for the community. I honestly had no idea what the book was going to be about, but I wanted to support the author, their book AND the community.

The Free People's Village was cool with a steam punk sort of vibe. It took me a little bit to get into it, as this isn't my norm genre (sci-fi-cli is what I'd call it). I dug the vivid world that Sim Kern built and the way we saw it through Maddie's eyes. I felt like I got a bit of an education while reading this book too. A little alternate reality that makes you think with a plethora of diverse characters.

Would I have picked up this book without being a part of the bookstagram community that was involved in the readathon? Probably not. But I'm glad I got out of my box and tried something different.

Heartbreaking, queer, political and punk as hell, The Free People's Village is a read best gone into with as little known as possible. Loved the characters and their journey, and can't help but be a little bitter about the heart-wrenching ending. Obsessed with this book.

The political aspects of this book were very interesting and once that element of it picked up, I enjoyed it a lot. The first half of the book dragged too much, though, partly because most of the characters are really unlikable, and I don’t mean that they’re unpalatable as much as that they seem underdeveloped and not very interesting to read about. Gestas and Shayna are the only good characters and neither of them is in it enough, and I think overall the book is tangibly missing the found family vibe it seems to be going for. I feel like it’s a strange choice to center a naive white protagonist who is hyper aware of her white savior complex in this story, it kind of just lampshades a problem that could have been fixed by switching povs or something like that.

This is the book for everyone who read Psalm of the Wild Built and wondered "but how do we get there?" A great addition to sci-fi's solarpunk genre, while still feeling grounded in the social issues of today.

premise:
dystopian adult science fiction, set in an alternate 2020 where Al Gore won the Presidential Election, and blows full steam ahead to the war on climate change, charging a carbon tax for almost everything
first-person perspective of Maddie
Maddie has left behind a toxic, abusive marriage to a Catholic man and is reckoning with and questioning her religious identity now too
She works as an English teacher during the day, and goes to a punk space called The Lab at nights
Maddie joins a band, Bunny Bloodlust, meets new people (Red, Gestas, Fish), and begins to examine her own privilege and complacency in white supremacy
She joins a Black-led movement/occupation protest to save the Eighth Ward, the primarily Black neighborhood that the Lab is in
Maddie goes from extremely religious (as a way to rebel from her parents surprisingly) to being part of an anarchistic revolution, and unpacking her place in the world!
themes and topics covered: race, religion/shame, white saviorism, gender, sexual orientation, climate change, drug abuse, gentrification
check the content warnings I've noted below!

thoughts:
Maddie was a great main character to follow! She was representative of white saviorism, white guilt and white liberalism all in one, yet Sim still fleshed Maddie out, and let her make mistakes (like it was extremely cringe sometimes hahaha), take accountability for them, and try to do better in the future. I think more people need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, with knowing they are going to fuck up, and practicing taking accountability in saying "I didn't know that" or "I should have known better, and I will be more mindful in the future".

Maddie's path to becoming an ally and fighting for justice is full of relatable conversations with her new found family, and I think most people will feel seen by both the defensiveness and naivety displayed at times, as well as the genuine yearning to be better. I firmly believe Maddie is a great main character for people who are new to learning these concepts (abolition theory, mutual aid, anti-racism, intersectional feminism, etc) to follow, as we see that Maddie is not perfect, but she is given the space to be brave, and to try again.

I loved how Gestas recommended books to Maddie for her existential journey to "becoming an ally 101": Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur, Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis, Black Marxism by J. Robinson, and a few more. The scene where these book recommendations happen is definitely one of my favorites. I appreciated how the discussion played out between Gestas & Maddie, and even though Maddie fumbled a lot (as Maddie does), I felt like this was a helpful way to outline the ideas of equity and social justice for people who are possibly reading about this for the first time!

Overall, this book felt like a call to action, and a reminder to keep putting in the work, even if you don't see the fruits of your labor *right now*, it's still worth it, and the community/revolution still needs you to keep planting seeds! I loved the ending chapter with the metaphors of the mushrooms, and felt hopeful and inspired by the end of it.

This is the first book I've read by Sim, but I'm excited to check out more of their work!

4.25⭐️
In an alternate timeline, Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election and waged a war on climate change and there was no war on terror (September 11th was thwarted). But it isn’t as idyllic a world as you would hope. Instead, the wealthy benefit from the “clean” infrastructure while the poor are penalized for not being able to convert to greener lifestyles. Greenwashing is rampant, wars are fought over resources, and the ugly truth is that much of the country’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. When Maddie (a white school teacher at a predominantly black school) finds out that her band mates’ apartment/venue (a building that her boyfriend owns) is about to be razed to make room for the expansion of the “green” freeway to the wealthy suburbs, she decides to join in the protest to “Save the Eighth”.

The writing in this book was really engaging and the story was well told. I loved Gestas and Lorenzo and Shayna and most of the people associated with The Free People’s Village. I really disliked Red. I thought xe was toxic and selfish and I really didn’t like the way Maddie idolized xim. For Maddie, I thought she was a deeply flawed character who was struggling with her flaws. The irony that she was trying so hard to do the work to de-center herself and whiteness and yet this book is told from her perspective is not lost on me. I do like that she acknowledges that as a white person fighting for people of color, she should look to them to lead as they will bear the brunt of the consequences of her actions.

In the end it left me feeling nihilistic and depressed. It doesn’t matter what timeline we live in; oppressors will oppress, money will triumph over people, hate will win more often than not. Maybe for others it will give them hope or pump them up for a revolution, but it made me examine how little we as individuals can affect meaningful and lasting change.

I really wanted this to be a great new dystopian feature and it just wasn't for me. The writing was good, the structure was fine, it just didn't pull me in at all. I didn't connect with the characters. The made-up futuristic, but somehow in the past, setting was confusing at times and hard to keep track of. I really do think some people will love this, but just not for me.