M.R. Carey’s writing was introduced to me when a book club friend picked The Girl With All the Gifts one month. I was immediately in love with the dark character studies that entrenched that book and went straight into the companion novel, The Boy on the Bridge, when it was released. Since then, I’ve discovered Carey is well known in the graphic novel community as Mike Carey, writing in both the DC and Marvel worlds (X-Men, Fantastic Four, and more) as well as a creator of popular characters such as Lucifer (click here for Mike Carey’s works and here for M.R. Carey’s)! 
	I was pleased to see he has a new work coming out - The Book of Koli - about a boy named Koli in a post-apocalyptic world. In this “new” world, Koli has grown up learning that the only safe place is inside the walls of his fortress-like town. Outside are creatures and plants waiting and ready to kill you at a moment's notice. The only saving graces are pieces of advanced technology that can be used to protect Koli’s people. However, after a series of events, Koli finds himself outside the walls, pushed to his own limits of survival on the search for deeper truths than he ever realized he needed to learn. 	
	I believe Carey is a masterful storyteller. He writes with such suspense and depth with his characters that readers can find themselves wanting to continue the story just to see what happens. Little details are left here and there that will make you question and wonder What comes next? or How in the heck did THAT happen?! but they always serve a purpose. They’re intentional, little tidbits of worldbuilding that I rather enjoy (compared to that info-dump that can happen in fantasy/sci-fi). 
	One thing I found difficult about this book is the style. Don’t get me wrong, it was intentional and fantastic, but it was also incredibly hard to read! Koli is writing this book (not a spoiler, mind you) after-the-fact and he’s never learned to read or write until after all this has occurred. With that in mind, Carey wrote this book with interesting word choices, spelling mistakes, and other various changes that occur to language over a period of time. It was fascinating and interesting to read, but made for slow going at first. I think it helped to build Koli’s character, though, and helped add to my desire for him to win, thrive, and survive. 
	I’m giving The Book of Koli 4-out-of-5 Awesome Austin Points. It’s engaging and unique in style with such fantastical science fiction elements that I think readers are going to be pleased when they get their hands on it. It’s set up to be a trilogy already, so be prepared for some closure but open plot lines as well. The Book of Koli will be hitting shelves on April 14, 2020!

An updated/edited version of this review will be posted to my blog April 5, 2020.

I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Prior to receiving an eARC of The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey, I had not read any of the author’s work. While I know of The Girl with All the Gifts, I think The Book of Koli was a great introduction into Carey’s work. I was sold on this book as soon as I saw that it was recommended for those who enjoyed Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. 

The Book of Koli is told from the point of view of the main character Koli who lives in a small village named Mythen Rood. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world. The population decreased and civilization as we know it was forced to adapt. Humans must now live and survive alongside nature that seems to have a mind of its own and strange new creatures that pose a constant threat. 

Koli’s village comes together under the rule of Ramparts—people who have control of technology that is used to benefit their community. Every person has a chance to make this technology “wake” for them, but not everything is what it seems. Koli’s life is disrupted when he discovers a secret that pushes him to defy the Rampart’s order. This secret and Koli’s actions launch his journey into the world outside of his village where he must fight to survive. 

The Book of Koli is a very entertaining novel. Koli is a likable protagonist who makes readers genuinely feel for him and the situations he is put in throughout the story. The world building is interesting, but I was hoping for more of an emphasis on the post-apocalyptic environment. Also, since the story is told from Koli’s point of view, it did take some time for me to get used to his language skills as well as words that were specific to his world. Nonetheless, the novel was intriguing. I look forward to reading the rest of this trilogy as well as other novels by M.R. Carey! 

Thank you to the publisher, Orbit Books, and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this novel before its release.

Not for me.  I described this as I was going at the YA version of the dystopian chapters of Cloud Atlas.  Maybe someone is into that, but I don’t mean it at a complement.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC

The Book of Koli is a great start to a trilogy about a world that has moved on... with some of the technology still intact.

The use of language is a little jarring, but useful in conveying the feelings of the unreliable narrator. 

Carey has written several good books that I can't put down and this is another one.

"'Monono Aware is sort of a gimmick name. It's a phrase in Japanese for a certain kind of feeling. Did you ever look at something beautiful, Koli, like a sunset or a flower, and think how sad it was that it would only be there for a little while? That it was going to vanish out of the world and never be seen again, and there was nothing you or anybody could do to make it stay? ... Then what you were feeling was monono aware. The sadness that's deep down inside beautiful things. The pain and suckiness of everything having a shelf life. I-love-you-so-much-goodbye-for-ever.'"

I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Orbit Books. Koli has been raised in the small village of Mythen Rood, well after the collapse of society due to rapidly evolving plantlife that has turned against humans. In his world, the wildlife is deadly, and trees even more so, but they're protected by the Ramparts, a small group of special villagers who can control the technology of the old world. Koli longs to be a Rampart, but when he discovers some of their secrets, he realizes that the power structures of his home are not what he thought--and people may be willing to kill to keep those secrets. Trigger warnings: death, violence, some body horror, eye horror, severe injury, guns, fires, blood, transphobia (countered in text).

There are a number of reasons this book and I didn't get along, but the thing I was never able to get past was the writing style. It's not written in standard written English, no doubt to reflect how much knowledge has been lost since the world ended and to represent Koli's "simple" worldview from his small village. There are a lot of double negatives, wrong verb tenses, and folksy spellings like "et" instead of ate. It is my job to help people with their grammar, so this gave me a headache. I don't go around correcting people or judging them when they're wrong; grammar can always get better, and I'm guilty of mistakes myself, but books go through a rigorous editing process before they're published. This is bad grammar on purpose, bad grammar for the sake of style, and I actively hated it for the entire book.

The second major problem is that Carey and I have a disagreement about what's most interesting in this book. This is a world where trees can walk around and crush people (AWESOME), yet we spend most of the time plunking around Koli's boring village while he obsesses over a girl. I wanted so much more of the post-apocalyptic world where plants have gone feral, but thanks to Koli's limited perspective, we rarely get to see any of that. The politics of his village are much less interesting and a thousand times more predictable. That people in power want to keep it isn't exactly a novel idea, and the major revelation of the first half is that you have to turn technology on to make it work. One of fiction's jobs is to make the familiar unfamiliar, and I sense that's what this book was trying to accomplish, but it never works. Mostly, I was just frustrated that Carey was spending chapters describing my own technology to me, like I've never seen a cell phone or railroad tracks (as Koli hasn't), while NOT describing his murder trees. I get it; murder trees are background noise to Koli like railroad tracks are to me, not worth describing because we see them all the time. Fine, it's clever, and also terribly, terribly boring.

Koli is rough as a main character. Though he's an adult in his village, he's a young adult by our standards (though this is not marketed as a YA novel because it was written by a man). I've read many YA books with cleverer and more interesting young adult characters though, and Koli's short-sightedness and self-centeredness are hard to swallow in a main character. The most interesting character isn't even a person but a semi-sentient AI called Monono who starts to realize that she's only an AI. The pacing is slow as well. Koli doesn't leave his village until midway in the book, and by the end, there's still the sense that things have only barely begun to take off. It's like reading an incredibly boring prequel to the book I wanted to read, but I won't be continuing with the series.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

The Book of Koli took me awhile to get into. I'll admit I almost gave up a few times. The language of the narrator, Koli, was hard for me to wrap my head around and made me think of reading Shakespeare. I really loved the other two books I have read by M. R. Carey, so I stuck with it. I am so glad I did. Once I got into the flow of story, I couldn't stop reading it. It was riddled with amazing quotes. "I seen now that dying wasn't just one single thing that happens one single time. A little of it comes with every ending, collecting in the heart of you like rainwater in a barrel." I would have highlighted more, but then most of the book would have been. Thank you Netgalley for the early access to the book. I can't wait for the next one in the series.

4 1/2 Stars

The Book of Koli starts off a little slow, but that’s a minor complaint as the world-building and character development are brilliantly done. M. R. Carey has created an utterly unique post-apocalyptic world, which given an already crowded world, including some of his own previous books, is no small feat. The characters are engaging and likable, making them easy to connect to, The second half has much more action and the ending perfectly sets the stage for the sequel. This is another winner for M. R. Carey, and I can’t wait for the next book!

Set in a small village, Mythen Rood, in an apocalyptic England, nature has taken back the planet and humans find themselves endangered. A young man, Koli Woodsmith, is determined to change his destiny but in doing so he may just change the fate of the world. 

The Book of Koli is the exciting first novel in the new Rampart trilogy by M.R. Carey. I am a big fan of M. R. Carey and I was so excited to get a change to read and review this new series. This book begins with Koli retelling his adventures beginning with his childhood in the village of Mythen Rood. Outside of the safety of the village walls lurk dangers in the form of mutated animals, killer plants, and cannibalistic humans. The Ramparts, a family who has the ability to "awaken" and use a variety of technological weapons, protect the villagers and keep them safe. Koli longs to change his status and become a Rampart but the discovery of a secret changes how he views his world and places him in danger. 
I don't want to give away too much as this first novel is really about character introduction, world building, and sets up Koli's adventures beyond the wall. The writing style uses an almost regressed form of English so it took a little while for me to get used to it but it becomes clearer as the book continues. I loved several of the characters including Koli, Spinner (his childhood love interest), and Ursula (the traveling medic). This novel explores some interesting concepts in social circumstance as the ability to use technology determines your social status and ability to survive. This was such an interesting and exciting introduction into the series and I can't wait to read the next two books.

The Book of Koli, a science fiction book, was a solid 4.5 stars. The book centers around main character Koli-a young boy living in a post-apocalyptic world. The story is told through Koli himself, a country boy living in the tiny village of Mythen Rood, who is suddenly forced out of the village due to uncovering some “truths” involving technology. 
The book of Koli is filled with a large cast of colorful characters and is highly entertaining. I especially enjoyed the first half of the book that detailed his life in Mythen Rood. I honestly felt invested throughout the entire book and the struggles Koli had to go through. Highly recommend to fans of fiction and science-fiction books. Thank you NetGalley for providing me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Firstly, I think it's only fair to say that M.R. Carey is probably my favorite contemporary author so I might already be a little bit biased when it comes to this title. I was so excited to hear that this was coming out, that it would be part of a series, and that I would be able to read it before it was widely distributed (thanks to Netgalley and Orbit). That being said, I had only read Carey's stand-alone novels before, and reading the first book of a series by him was a new experience. 

Disclaimers aside, let's get to the story. If you are a fan of Margret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake," or any kind of speculative, post-apocalyptic fiction this book is 100% for you. It takes contemporary concerns about issues like genetic modification, but instead of focusing on humans or animals it spotlights plant life. After the world was wrecked by climate change and humans are unable to grow anything they genetically modify plants, specifically trees to get their nutrients in other ways and to grow at ridiculous rates. Then the trees start moving... Things get kind of wild after that.

"The Book of Koli" is set after these events. The world before the "fall" is still more futuristic than our own, and tech plays a big role in the plot. In this world there is a "Divergent"-style test where the young people of Koli's village see if the tech of old will "wake" for them. Those who control the tech control the village, and those in power will usually go to great lengths to maintain it.

I feel like "The Book of Koli" hit all of my favorite tropes of the kind of genre: reconstructed mythology of the way things used to be, fanatical cults, and changing language and syntax as the result in a mass wipe-out of most of humanity. Since the story is told to us by Koli himself, it is in the current dialect of the world. This kind of writing might not be fore everyone (think of "Cloud Atlas" or "Paper Girls"), but it seems only logical that the way people speak would change dramatically after mass communication died out. 

Oh! How could I forget, there are not one but TWO trans characters in this novel, their identities are mostly respected (aside from some futuristic religious fanatics), and NEITHER of them is killed as a plot point. Better yet, it looks like one of them is being set up to be a main character. 

All in all, I am very excited to see where this trilogy goes, and just so happy to read more of M. R. Carey's work!

Hmmmmm.

Welcome to yet another post-apocalypse, where trees try to eat you, drones try to blow you up, 200 people constitute an astonishingly large settlement, and whoever can successfully use the few remaining pieces of old tech are raised up as honored leaders of the community. Koli lives a peaceful life in his home at Mythen Rood, until a traveling healer accidentally reveals his entire life has been built on a lie.

The post-apocalypse is well-trodden ground at this point, including in M. R. Carey’s own past work. I ended up reading a lot of post-apocalypse fiction last year, so I’m a little tired of the genre. Still, Carey’s managed to create a pretty cool, lived-in world that’s suitably inventive and interesting. 

Koli’s narrative voice goes a long way to making that world seem real. The narrative voice is so unique in this book, and it immediately creates a setting of its own. There were times in the middle of the book, when the story was dragging (more on that later), that Koli’s narration got kind of grating and excessive. But for the most part, the narration contributes greatly to the worldbuilding and overall tone of the book.

My big issue with The Book of Koli is that the plot doesn’t start until about halfway through the book. The first half is entirely setup and worldbuilding. Koli walks us through his world, home, and customs at a painfully slow pace. At first, I enjoyed the worldbuilding for its own sake. But then I had to sit through a detailed recounting of Koli’s daily life and all his interpersonal family relationships (none of which are relevant later on), and then there were pages and pages about the complex coming of age ceremony in Mythen Rood, and it just goes on and on and on.

It should not take 150 pages for the plot to start.  If I hadn’t received this book as an ARC that I was obligated to make a good faith effort to finish, I probably would have given up.

I’m glad I didn’t, because the second half really takes off like a speeding train. Once Koli finally leaves Mythen Rood (spoiler, I guess, but Koli makes a lot of veiled comments about traveling far beyond Mythen Rood early on, so not really), things become infinitely more interesting. There’s still a lot of worldbuilding, but because that worldbuilding is buried in amongst the plot, it doesn’t drag or slow things down. And the fact of the matter is, Koli’s Mythen Rood is a small, tired village. The world beyond is so much more interesting.

I’m curious to see where Koli’s story goes next, and I’ll definitely grab a copy of the sequel from the library. But I desperately wish the first half of The Book of Koli had been condensed and tightened up. 

I received a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.

NOTE: This review will not be published publicly until one month prior to book publication date.

This is a book that mixes nature and technology, the past and the future together. This was my first book by this author, and I have to say I'm a fan. The writing style was a small learning curve, but after a chapter it felt like an old friend. I loved that about the world-building -- there were little minor things that added up to this dystopic future. The evolution of language and of faith were excellently shown. I especially liked the idea that the trees were enemies, not protectors. If anything, though, The Book of Koli's true talent is in its ability to juxtapose quiet moments with action. We follow Koli through a formative moment of his life. And part of that moment includes some intense action. He isn't the smartest, but he's got wits for days. If I had any criticism, it would be that some of the more minor characters, especially the Ramparts, felt very throwaway and forgettable. Ursula was fantastic, though. And the friendship between Monono and Koli is what I aspire towards. All in all, a fantastic story that I hope gets even better in the sequels.

First, thank you to NetGalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I had a hard time settling on a rating for this book, because my personal hangup with it is probably easily overlooked by someone else. To get the good out of the way first, the premise is extremely interesting. Here you have Koli, this country village bumpkin living within his little bubble of what he knows in what is soon revealed to be a dystopian, post-apocalyptic England. His life gets upended at some point (maybe a little further along than I would have liked) through a well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt to acquire some "tech", and he finds himself on quite a little adventure. The plot is fun, intense in places, and a little thought-provoking in others.

To touch on the bad, first and foremost, the book is written from the viewpoint of this uneducated country boy, with all the narrating baggage that implies. Descriptions are sometimes hard to follow because Koli doesn't always have the words to describe what he's seeing. Intentionally bad grammar abounds, because the book takes the form of him relating his adventures to you as a story. Things were also told a bit out of order in the beginning because Koli would start to relate something to you, or insinuate something, and then backtrack from it with lines akin to "but I need to tell you this first before I tell you that". It was mildly annoying to read, at times. I also feel like some of the thought-provoking parts about civilization gone astray were heavy handed in places. Finally, the beginning sort of drags. It takes about half the book before Koli finally gets his call to action and the plot starts picking up. 

So, summarizing, I ended up giving this a 3.5/5, because I had a hard time getting through the writing style to the meat underneath (maybe I'm a shallow person), and because the beginning felt like it dragged on a bit long.

First off, thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this beautifully written story about a boy, a piece of ancient tech and the lengths you go for those you love. 
The world that Koli lives in is in the future after the planet has been overgrown with genetically modified trees that now kill humans for food and plants that are the enemy to anything that lives. There are very few people left in the world and in the village that Koli lives in the people who are in charge are the ones that the ancient tech will "awaken" for. When Koli finds out that everything he believed about the people who used the tech was false he starts an event that will take him far from home and teach him about what really is happening in the world. 
The story is told as if Koli is speaking directly to you and it is written in his dialect and accent that can take some getting used to but I quickly acclimated with no issues. I thought that the story was very engaging, unique and original. I definitely cannot wait for the rest of the trilogy.

This was a hard book to get into, the writing style took awhile to used to and could be quite distracting. Once it got going it was a pretty good read. I am not sure I liked the way it was told it wasn't just the choice of wording but often the narrator would start to tell you something, then stop and it was a little frustrating.

I’ve not read anything from this author before this. So many great reviews from his series, The Girl With All The Gifts, and now I wanna get a hold of that series. Ok so The Book of Koli is a science fiction story of how anything tech/ weapon is something to be controlled. However not everyone can control it. I’ll stop there.

This is a pretty good tale of how the world looks like after so much has happened. It’s almost like having to start over. Koli is the protagonist in the story. He is the one who uncovers the truth about the tech. It was a pretty good read in my opinion. It has action, friendship, and some scenes makes you feel sorry for him. Moderate pace for me. Hmm come to think of it, I pretty much imagined this as a show lol. Maybe it could be 🤔 This the the first book of the series and I hope everyone will enjoy it.  I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. Maybe I’ll talk about it some more once it’s out.

Great worldbuilding with an interesting cast of characters. Can’t wait to find out what happens next!

This has a slow start, but really works once it gets going. Interesting tech and premise, and well executed overall. I have another of the author's books on my list and this will motivate me to read it quickly. Not sure what else to say other than I recommend it.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been enjoying M.R. Cary for quite some time now and I jumped on the chance to review his new series through Netgalley.

So was it everything I might have hoped? Yes! And maybe.

At first, I realized, belatedly, that this had all the hallmarks of a YA novel. He's done some good YA in the past, so I settled into life in a dystopian future with ancient advanced tech, trees that like to hunt us, and provincial life that takes a major turn for the worse.

Standard fare, mostly, with some really fun and cool aspects that just BEG to be explored. And we do explore them. In fact, I had the best time when we got to *spoiler spoiler ipod-not-ipod spoiler*. From then on, I just chortled and had a great time. Of course, I had to get there first. Nothing too onerous. And I have to say I had a lot more time with this one than I've had with MOST of a long line of YA SF novels, so kudos!

Can't wait to read the next!

Interesting, not what you would expect but in a good way. I'll be thinking of this one for awhile... That ending is going to make the wait for book two unbearable. More to come closer to publication.