The Light Pirate

This book did not click for me the way I hoped it would. There were things I liked: the writing of the hurricane scene in second half of part one was incredibly intense and engaging, and the division of the book into four parts had potential.

Unfortunately, there was so much that just didn't seem to work. Most of the character development happens in part one, but it feels like a waste, because the characters we learn about are almost entirely irrelevant by the end of the book. Wanda, the main character, never felt fully fleshed out so it was hard to be invested in her journey.

I don't think the deterioration of civilization was sufficiently articulated. There are random time jumps where we get some sense of the growing hellscape that is Florida/the world, but the time jumps seem like an excuse to avoid the work of explaining how things ended up they way they did. Why are we suddenly afraid to even be seen by any other human, for example? Not every dystopian novel necessarily must explain the full pathway to its dystopian state, but in this case, I feel like it would have been a lot more effective since it is clearly supposed to represent a real warning about the impacts of ignoring climate change.

The magical realism element felt like a random idea to throw in that didn't turn out to be super relevant or necessary. Was it supposed to be some sort of representation of evolution? And also, the last minute relationship with Birdie felt extremely forced. I finished feeling like I had just read a first draft of potentially interesting story ideas that never evolved into anything cohesive.

Book author: Lily Brooks-Dalton