Notes from the Burning Age

"This is such a good book. It took me some time to get into it, because it’s a future novel, looking back at the ‘Burning Age,’ which is now. The premise of the book is that a group of entities called the kakuys , spirits of the Earth, arose during the Burning Age to stop the burning from happening. It starts with three children who go into the forest: one dies and we follow the lives of the other two. They live in a eco-communitarian community where the kakuys are viewed as god-like and the priests in the Temple help everyone stay in balance: it’s a beautiful utopia. Which was one reason why I found it hard to get into. I loved Claire North’s previous book The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August . If your readers haven’t read it, I totally recommend it – but it’s definitely not utopic. I pushed through, though, and Notes moves forward in time, to the adulthood of one of the two surviving children. He is revealed to be an undercover agent who has gone very deep cover inside ‘the Brotherhood,’ which has set up in opposition to the Temple: very much like the climate deniers now have set up in opposition to anyone attempting to create a livable future. So at one level it is a spy thriller—a brilliant one—in which our hero is endeavouring to discover the identity of his opposite number: a member of ‘the Brotherhood’ who is deep undercover in ‘the Temple.’ The detail of his life is fascinating—what the Temple does is mine for notes from the Burning Age; they go through the debris of the past, and bring out cat videos, pornography, the texts from someone about what their boyfriend said—all the digital rubbish we’re throwing out. But in amongst it are designs for things that might be useful: internal combustion engines and tanks and submarines. It’s so cleverly done. It leans on that Arthur C. Clarke concept that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It’s beautifully written and works on every level: as thriller, as a spy novel , as a love story of sorts, as a warning of how bad things could be but with a sense that the world will fight back—and ultimately as a wry look at the rubbish we’re creating online. It completely and excruciatingly shines a light on how we have behaved, what we have done, and what we have become as a result. Overall, as with all North’s work, it’s a beautifully written, incredibly clever book, with gorgeous language. The depth of the characterisation is beautifully done so that, from a writer’s perspective, it’s a masterclass. And from a reader’s perspective it kept me up too late for many nights in a row. That’s always a good recommendation for a book."