This was a standout debut perfect for fans of dystopian/climate change novels like the MaddAddam series, Station Eleven or American war. I really loved that the book followed different characters (not just a single protagonist) so we got a good sense of the various ways people were surviving in this post-flood world.

An April Read with Jenna pick, this is definitely going to be a favorite for book clubs and was great on audio narrated by a cast. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy and Librofm for an ALC in exchange for my honest review!

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for sending me an advance copy of this book in return for my honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on 4/4/23.

This book is set in a dystopian future where climate change has wreaked havoc on the world. Storms, flooding, and dangerously hot temperatures have made much of the United States uninhabitable. Camp Zero is an American settlement in northern Canada purportedly there to build a new city and refuge for Americans. The story is told through three main characters: Rose, a sex worker with an ulterior motive; Grant, a teacher trying to escape his past and his powerful father; White Alice, an all-female collective of American scientists sent to a climate research station on a mysterious mission.

I was lost and searching for a plot for the first half of this book. I liked the writing and the characters, but the lack of direction was starting to get under my skin. Thankfully, the plot finally began to emerge. The more I read, the more captivated I became, so much so that I would really like a sequel.

The premise of this one was super intriguing. I always love reading dystopian books and bonus points for those that the world ended in climate change or a virus, but this one fell flat for me. I enjoyed getting the story from 3 different perspectives. I also found myself enjoying one character over the others. It was nice to see how they were intertwined and how they came together. I also loved the setting of this book, but I found myself longing for more description. I just felt that the overall execution of this one fell flat.

I didn’t love this one but I didn’t hate it and would recommend it if you are looking for a climate change dystopian novel.

Thank you to Atria Books, @atriabooks, and Netgalley, @netgalley for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 rounded up to 4. Camp Zero is a near future climate change dystopian tale set in 2049. It was slow moving at first and took me longer than normal to become invested, but once I did, I finished the 2nd half in an afternoon.

The story is told by three POVs. Rose is assigned to Camp Zero in the colder climate of Canada as a “companion” (yes, that kind), Grant is the son of one of the oldest and wealthiest families trying to escape his father, and the last POV is a group of women scientists who are collectively “we”. The women are stationed on a base in the very cold northern climate.

The Americans are looking to build a future in the north at Camp Zero as the south has become too harsh and hot with the affects of climate change.

The story weaves back and forth between the POVs and also jumps back and forth into backstories. My favorite chapters were of the women. It did take a while for the storylines to finally converge.

I was left underwhelmed by the ending, probably because the book just… ends. I’m not a huge fan of those types of endings. Unless there’s a possible book 2?

I’m a huge fan of dystopian stories, so I did enjoy this one overall.

*Thanks to Atria Books and to NetGalley for the advance eGalley.*

Delighted to include this title in the April edition of Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction, for the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I DNF this book. I am only putting a rating because this makes me, and I do not want to have a bad feedback ratio on my profile, so I am going to review what I did read. This book was not for me. I did not really care what was happening and I felt that this was different than what I was expecting.

I'm still not sure exactly how I feel about this book. I liked it and was compelled to finish the book, however, I really didn't connect with any of the characters and was confused for the first half of the book.

There is no time line and 3 different POVs - meaning the reader can't tell if the POVs are all speaking at the same time in history or 3 different times. It takes quite a while for the stories to merge, which was what kept me confused during the first part of the book.

The story opens years after there has been a major climate disaster leaving much of the US destroyed or too hot to be habitable. People are flocking to Canada and the cold climate. I wish there was a little more about the climate disaster aspect. There wasn't much backstory and it was difficult to envision. It felt like the world-building was lacking, but the writing was beautiful. There is a definite overarching theme of the quiet power of women vs. the greedy, destructive power of men.

"Women were entrusted with memory. They carried the stories of the last generation to their own children. Women mourned and grieved what was lost, only to see the same mistakes and tragedies repeated in the next generation. Women were witnesses."

I rate this one a solid 3. I recommend to readers who enjoy dystopian stories centering around climate change. I liked this original story - and there were some cool concepts - but thought it lacked cohesion. Still recommend. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC to read and review.

This bleak yet mesmerizing eco-fiction moves at a languid pace but with flashes of intensity that keep you reading.

This book is likely slower than most people would expect. The electrifying things about it are more in the concepts and brief moments of action than the plot, which is quite slow-moving. Truthfully, I kind of loved it. The style draws you in, and it’s a very realism-based story with the main plot being decidedly believable. And then we have the women at the base, which is part survival part Mad Max Fury Road in the snow (minus the car chases).

The novel is told from three points of view: Rose, Grant, and an unnamed first-person set in the White Alice camp. The latter reminded me a bit of Annihilation, as it’s populated entirely by women who are only known by their occupations (e.g. the geographer, the engineer, etc). All three are equally compelling and provide exposition on the world at large. Disaster brought by climate change is also a major focus of the novel and is depicted in a realistic yet horrific way.

I liked the characters. Rose is calm and collected, having perfected that persona as armor. Never once does she stray from her overall mission: to get her mother to a safe place. Everyone in this novel acts like an adult - there are no overly dramatic declarations of love or hysteria on behalf of anyone. Grant is likeable as well, a man struggling under the weight of privilege in that he's aware of it and feels guilt and pressure from it. And the unnamed narrator of White Alice gives a compelling and concise history of the women’s commune.

The story itself is layered, where people from all three plotlines overlap in ways that you figure out just before the reveal - in that regard, it was very satisfying. The story is packed with not subtle jabs at wealth culture, greed, systemic misogyny, and inequality which I was totally on board with.

I will say, though, that the ending is a bit rushed. Everything else in the novel moves languidly, but the last ten percent jammed in a lot and wrapped things up in a way that felt like a birthday gift hastily shoved in a paper bag. You know, it was there, but it wasn’t done up in the best way.

One of the most interesting things about the novel is the inclusion of a tech called the Flick, which is a device embedded in you at birth that allows you to be connected to the internet at all times. It’s clearly a jab at our hyperconnectivity today and how it’s argued to be eroding our ability to communicate with others offline.

One thing I very much enjoyed was the normalized depiction of sex work in the book. When sex work is voluntary, it's simply a job - Rose fully chooses this job, and the most realistic thing about it is how she’s getting tired of it. And not the sex part either, but having to put up with the tedium of her clients’ conversations and having to pander to their emotional needs. You rarely see this in novels, and I found it refreshing and humanizing.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this novel and recommend it!

Camp Zero had so much promise. The write up is exciting and intriguing. The book itself is slow . It’s told by three different characters but they did not have a distinct voice . They story did not feel as though it was moving and I ended up quitting at 26% in to the book. I had to push myself to read that much of the book.

I’ve said it many times before … I like books that take characters who seem unrelated and then weave their stories together, and Michelle Min Sterling does this well in CAMP ZERO. The book gave me Station Eleven vibes, but where Station Eleven is uplifting, CAMP ZERO is darker and more edgy.

There are three storylines woven through CAMP ZERO, which is set in the near future in the icy north. Rising temperatures have changed the world dramatically, and survivors are adapting to a new way of living. There’s Rose, an escort who is living at Camp Zero with ulterior motives. There’s Grant, a college professor who wants nothing more than to forget his wealthy family. And there’s a mysterious group of women at a Cold War-era research station who are shut off from the outside world.

There are some great “ah ha!” moments here, and the story is intricately written. I really enjoyed the glimpses of an eerie post-apocalyptic world. I was fascinated (and terrified) by the thought of “the flick,” a device implanted in most people at birth, so they have a feed of everything they need right in their heads.

The only issue I had with CAMP ZERO is that I was always invested in one character’s story more than the others, although each character did have their time to shine.

A sincere thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an eARC of CAMP ZERO in exchange for my honest opinion.

Ebook/Dystopian Mystery:. I'm giving the first half of the book one star and the second half of the book four stars.
The first half of the book is confusing and it took me two months to slog threw it. Once a body finally hits the ground and why, the plot finally makes sense and the story becomes a page turner. There is a lot of backstory and people with aliases that still makes it confusing.

Michelle Min Sterling creates a fascinating and plausible dystopian world taking place in the near future. This story really kept me on my toes! It steadily painted a vivid picture of the fragile world that the characters live in. The characters themselves were relatable and extremely engaging. I found myself excited every time the POV switched because I wanted to know what everyone else was thinking and doing.

Although I found the plot twist underwhelming, I genuinely enjoyed the ride of getting there. In the end, however, I found myself wanting even more. I want to know more about the floating cities and more from the folks at White Alice. Overall, this novel was a journey I was happy to have gone on. And if there’s a sequel? Count me in!

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Well that was certainly a story. I'm not 100% sure I know what I just read, but I can tell you I enjoyed very little of it. The writing style worked for me (especially the White Alice sections), but the pacing was not good, the characters felt bizzare and flat, including Grant's perspective at all felt....off? I had to force myself to read this a few times (the last 30% or so picks up I suppose) because I just wasn't really interested in what was coming. I like the premise, I like the White Alice parts, and the story had good roots, but the execution felt empty somehow. Like we watched a story that ended where it started and nothing in the middle mattered much. Also that ending - was that sequel teasing? Or just deliberately open ended? It doesn't matter really, I don't like either option.

**Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the eARC**

It’s 2049, due to climate change, the seasons are now extremes. The United States suffers with massive environmental catastrophes and people are flocking to the cold north. Camp Zero is soon to be a refuge for Americans to escape the heat of the south, the idealistic architect only needs to keep spurring the project on.

There are 3 narratives we follow in this story, and all 3 of those narratives. All 3 switch back and forth between present day and relieving flashbacks and are all well-differentiated. Korean American, Rose, is sent to Camp Zero to spy on the architect in exchange for a new life. She is seemingly docile, determined, and longs for a place to call home. Grant hopes the north is far enough to outrun his past and his family name. He takes a position as an English teacher at the camp, only for it to be not what he expected. Our last narrator is White Alice, which is a collective point of view using ‘we’ throughout the story. These is a group women sent north to a climate site.

Honestly, I didn’t particularly like any of our narrators. I pictured Rose to be monotone. Grant seemed idealistic and pampered. The collective ‘we’ viewpoint was the most interesting, but I tend to dislike stories told in first-person plural, it often distracts me from the story.

Plot wise – I found the story to drag. We spend quite a bit of time on flashbacks, which while I appreciated getting to know our characters more, I didn’t find them to add much to moving the story forward. It took me half the book to become somewhat engaged, though I will say when we got to the action, it was completely engaging. But the pacing was too slow for me, and the flashbacks really bogged down the story. There is a ton of commentary on climate change, environmental awareness, and sexism which I actually really enjoyed these parts of the story. But they couldn’t overcome the pacing of the story.

The ending was messy for me and left with quite a few unknowns. While we know that climate change is the reason for the environmental events, we never quite learn why we’re in a dystopian environment. It’s alluded to but the answers are never clear. If you’ve been following my reviews for a while, you’ll know I love definitive endings, and am not a huge fan of open endings.

While I thought the writing was wonderful, the story just didn’t deliver for me. I found it to drag and I was left with too many unanswered questions. As a plot-based reader, I needed more action and my expectations of having a ‘page-turner’ skewed my opinion. This book is very much in the vein of Station Eleven, Goodmorning, Midnight, and The Drift. If you’re looking for a more character driven dystopian than this one is for you.

Camp Zero comes out April 4, 2023. Huge thank you to Atria Books for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof.books.

Thanks to Atria Books for the copy of this ARC!

Camp Zero is a BIPOC debut centered around a settlement in northern Canada in 2050, a year when climate change has made a severe impact and technology is literally ingrained into everyday life. Told from the POV of Rose (sex worker and child of a Korean immigrant), Grant (professor from entitled family), and White Alice (group of women soldiers living in a research station), this book delves into themes of climate change, male entitlement, female empowerment, and classism.

While I was intrigued by this book, I wasn’t quite sure where the storyline was going. In the end, as the mystery of the camp’s purpose and future are revealed, the characters also decide what they want their futures to look like, and we get some flashbacks to better understand their decision-making process. I was definitely compelled to finish this one and liked it, but thought the twists were predictable and also found it to be just kind of weird. If the premise looks interesting, I’d suggest trying it out, but I could honestly take or leave it!

Read if you:
- care about the impact of climate change
- like dystopian novels
- like the dynamic of women finally overpowering entitled men

Great story and writing but an editor really needs to slim this down. The writing is a bit repetitive and tedious for most of the book. It's like that friend you have that posts every single meal of every day. Similarly, so many of the meals and outfits are described in each and every scene without moving the story along. By the halfway point, it was still not clear where the book was headed. Not a big deal, but there are also a few factual errors. First, this story is set only 20 years in the future. It seems unlikely that things will have changed that much by then and people will forget what life was like in 2020s. There are some other errors about fish and plants that just show a lack of research on the authors part but don't really mess with the story that much.
Hope to read more from the author as she finds her voice!

Content notes: sex is mentioned but not described in detail, foul language is used 1-2 times per chapter, prostitution is the central character's profession, animal deaths for food and roadkill, climate change affects

2.5
I was excited about this soon to be futuristic world perspective! Resources in the world are scarce, humanity has changed using implants with a visual field instead of using a device such as a phone for information. We follow a couple characters and their life teaching and being a service girl to men in the work field.

It almost felt like the author was leaning on the Handmaid's Tale and some of the plot points there. I didn't love that in this futuristic world that women are still used for sex and their bodies--I just didn't want to read this, once again. Let's give women power, not use them as mens instruments.

Sigh. Ultimately, I was bored. I could've hung in there and handled the issues I stated above if there was some movement in the plot, but it lost my interest.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the advance e-book.

I liked the writing style of this work--the narrative voice of the main character was really compelling, and I felt like the setting was well realized. I think where the book lost me was the pacing. It could feel a little inconsistent at times, but I also felt that the book could have been a bit faster-paced. I think it would have served the story better than a slower build. I also felt like some of the characters faded into the background--they were introduced but their depth never felt like it went any further than their circumstances. I enjoyed the relevant commentary about sex work/sex-workers, though, and I thought that was well done. In a funny twist of events, the book overall I felt was pretty slow paced but the very end was almost too rushed. I wish we were given a bit more time to really soak in everything. Overall, I didn't overly enjoy this, but I did enjoy the commentary and the hopeful tone in the end.

Camp Zero is Michelle Min Sterling’s debut novel set in the dystopian future of an earth ravaged by climate change; where only the rich and powerful have a chance at survival and the safest place to be is the Floating City in Boston harbor. One of these rich and powerful men is Damien Mitchell, the creator of the “Flick” - a device implanted in the brain at birth and provides real time feeds of news, shows, and anything the mind can think of - living in the central part of the Floating City called the Loop. It’s here that he meets Rose, a “hostesses,” and he hatches a plan that sends her to the arctic north to live at Camp Zero. It’s here that she lives with her cohort of “hostesses,” serving the important men of Camp Zero, fulfilling their every desires. Rose was paired with Murphy, the head of the operation, and the person Rose was sent to “get close to” and report back information about the project unfolding at Camp Zero. However, things start to get mysterious when Grant, a professor hired to teach at the future "campus" of Camp Zero, arrives. While this story unfolds, there is a separate story that takes place in a place called White Alice. The reader is uncertain of the relationship between White Alice and Camp Zero, as well as the chronological separation of the two. There are many characters in this story, many timelines, many plots and overall I found them at times discordant but overall exciting. I was invested in the story and finished this book in one sitting, which speaks to the readability of the novel. However, 90% of the story was character development and building up to this climactic moment, that never really came. Camp Zero felt like it was intended to be the first book in a trilogy, rather than a stand alone novel. There was so much left unanswered at the end, that I would gladly read another book to get some closure. My question is, why spend so much time building this world and creating this characters to leave it so unfinished? Despite these personal opinions on the ending, I enjoyed the author’s writing and I did enjoy the story - I just wish there was more!

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.