The Trials of Koli

August 1, 2020
This middle volume in Carey's postapocalyptic Rampart trilogy continues the story of Koli, a boy exiled from the village of Mythen Rood for uncovering its rulers' secrets. Koli and his friends, the scientist Ursala, a young trans woman named Cup, and the self-aware (and somewhat stereotypically written) Japanese AI Monono, continue towards lost London to trace the mysterious signal from someone known only as The Sword of Albion. Along the way they have to overcome carnivorous seeds, marauders, and their own wariness of one another. Meanwhile in Mythen Rood, a plague puts the entire community in danger and puts an enormous amount of strain on the eldest member of the ruling Vennastin family, Rampart Remember. Koli's childhood friend and newly married member of the Vennastins, Spinner, comes to be relied on to help the eldest Rampart, and begins a journey that will transform her village forever. At times feeling like a YA-oriented version of Jeff Vandermeer's Borne (2017), this novel should please Carey's existing fans as well as fans of the postapocalyptic subgenre in general.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

July 13, 2020
Carey broadens the scope of his Rampart trilogy in this solid second adventure (following The Book of Koli) set in a dangerous, postapocalyptic England in which technology is taboo and nature itself, mutated amid civilization’s destruction, is a constant threat. Now an exile from the oppressive village of Mythen Rood, Koli Woodsmith, together with a motley crew of human and robotic companions, sets out to find the fabled land of London, following a signal from a mysterious entity called Sword of Albion. Meanwhile, Koli’s former friend Spinner Vennastin gets married in Mythen Rood. But there are soldiers on the move who will kill to take all surviving tech they find, and Spinner learns the only way to save her village may be with the same forbidden technology that could get her shot by the soldiers or hanged by her own people. Readers who were frustrated by Koli’s dialect in the first installment will continue to struggle with his voice (“There come a time, by and by, when I feared we was not going to get to London at all”), but the broader cast brings welcome relief and diversity. Branching out from Mythen Rood was also a good choice, allowing Carey space to build a broken world that is both marvelously expansive and claustrophobically menacing. New readers will have no trouble jumping in here, and fans of postapocalyptic science fiction will find plenty to hold their attention.