Kirkus, one of the venerable editorial reviewer sources, thought pretty well of Over Brooklyn Hills, I’m happy to say. Of course, you can read the review yourself here in this post, or go online to the Kirkus site itself.
Here’s my favorite line from the Kirkus review of Over Brooklyn Hills:
Guenette’s attention to the ways in which climate change may affect communities at the local level makes for a compelling read, and the writing is zippy and clean.
On the other hand, the Kirkus reviewer chose to highlight the review with the following quote:
A few too many ideas prove distracting in this otherwise prescient and compelling near-future climate exploration.
A mixed compliment, seems like, but overall the review was a good one. You can judge this for yourself, reading the review in full:
OVER BROOKLYN HILLS, THE STEEP CLIMES QUARTET, BOOK THREE
A few too many ideas prove distracting in this otherwise prescient and compelling near-future climate exploration.
It’s now 2035 in the third book of the author’s Steep Climes quartet. This novel follows a large cast of characters in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, as they deal with an influx of tourists and “climate refugees” (read: “Brooklyn hipsters” traveling to the mountains to beat the heat). It’s troubling that hikers on the Appalachian Trail are arriving earlier in the season; the town simply isn’t ready for the throngs of New Yorkers who descend on the Berkshires during a scorching heat wave that July and August. The residents must respond to the high demand for vacation rentals, food, and space as crowds of tent-dwelling urbanites (“They’re sleeping on the sidewalks!”) arrive. The novel tracks the tensions between local policymakers, NIMBY protesters against housing expansion, and struggling workers who must meet rising rent costs or else be forced to live in tents. Davin Caine, a septuagenarian artist and homeowner in Great Barrington, rents out parts of his house to various boarders to pay the bills while investigating what—or who—is taking radishes from his garden. The expansive cast of characters also includes a journalist getting the scoop on dark money funding climate denialism, the town manager looking into mysterious gunshots while recovering from a messy split with her husband, and an online newspaper entrepreneur hoping to expand her business. Guenette’s attention to the ways in which climate change may affect communities at the local level makes for a compelling read, and the writing is zippy and clean. The author struggles somewhat with the difficult job of balancing several different stories, and some plot points fall to the wayside. Going beyond local concerns, Guenette also includes chapters about an eco-terrorist organization in cahoots with Mexican drug cartels, a narrative that warrants its own, dedicated novel.
A few too many ideas prove distracting in this otherwise prescient and compelling near-future climate exploration.
The storyline that the reviewer seems to be saying was one storyline too many–and yet, a good one–is the story of Alan Randolph, a No One is Safe cell member. Originally, the NOS character was a one-off, mainly to give readers some concrete sense of background for what would be recurring news items about the “climate terrorist” group that Davin and others see a couple of times in the course of Over Brooklyn Hills, but I ended up having so much fun writing the character who goes by “Maker,” his NOS codename, through most of the book.
Fun writing because the storyline of Maker/Alan Randolph required intricate plotting, and, sure, I love trying to figure out criminal behavior that is less likely to get the perpetrator caught, but the point of the NOS story through the second and third books is to explore what might happen if people get angry enough at the fossil fuel industry for cavalierly burning the world for more money. After all, the more we learn about the bad behavior of Big Oil, the angrier some are likely to get. There’s already plenty of bad behavior we know, including the industry’s supporting and funding climate denialism and delay, even while knowing for decades, through their own scientists, that global warming is an actual problem. Or all the influence buying, careless polluting; just the volume of leaking methane from a million “abandoned” wells across the world alone is a major problem, never mind the leaky pipes and spills from active natural gas and oil extraction and processing. Or the violence and maltreatment of disadvantaged people in the developing world, or, for that matter, the climate injustice visited mostly on poorer communities in our very own U.S.A.
The theme of Big Oil’s malfeasance is carried in other ways in Over Brooklyn Hills and the other books. In Over Brooklyn Hills’s 2035, there are hundreds of active lawsuits in the U.S. against fossil fuel corporations that are winding their way through the courts, with the end point in sight. Jimmy, Davin’s son, has been the IT guy for NoNolo, which is a legal document clearinghouse servicing many of these cases and there’s some shenanigans there, too.
But the various plot points mentioned above, while fun to write and fun to read, remain in service to the larger theme of the series, which is that any and all of us come to climate change through the lens of our own lives and we experience climate consequences mostly through the affect on our daily lives, whether in the form of costs or some type or other of corporeal engagement, which, in the above review, is referenced with the line “…what—or who—is taking radishes from his garden.”
Hey, but the book and write up your own review!
You can buy the latest title in The Steep Climes Quartet from many places, including through your local bookstore using Bookshop.org or by simply asking your favorite bookseller to order Over Brooklyn Hills. Or Amazon, too, Kindle or paperback. Or ePub format. You’ll find links for the other titles on the home page, too.