Independent Publishing | David Guenette

Kirkus Weighs In On Over Brooklyn Hills

David Guenette — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 18:29:23 +0000

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.

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.

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.

In the near future, the Berkshires weather a strain on resources resulting from climate displacement in Guenette’s ecological novel.

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.

The post Kirkus Weighs In On Over Brooklyn Hills first appeared on David Guenette.

Another Editorial Review of Over Brooklyn Hills

David Guenette — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:49:58 +0000

And here’s another strong review, which, for those who know me well, means that my hands can stop sweating (at least for the moment). A previous review of Over Brooklyn Hills can be found here.

Here’s a quote from the review that captures, I think, what I’m trying to do with the series The Steep climes Quartet:

I felt less like I was being shown a future world and more like I was being asked to notice the one already forming around us. That’s unsettling. It’s also the book’s strength.

I’ve been writing a lot about climate fiction and what makes a story or novel climate fiction, and the reviews coming in are helpful articulations of this question. Of course, my pending interview with them will force me to articulate my view on this question of what makes fiction climate fiction.

This review copied below is from Literary Titans, which describes itself as “an organization of professional editors, writers, and professors passionate about the written word. We review fiction and non-fiction books in different genres, conduct author interviews, and recognize talented authors with our monthly Literary Titan Book Award. We are privileged to work with so many creative authors around the world and help them promote their work.”

With the advent of independent publishing, there’s been a slew of such services, but Literary Titan has managed to be early in and is well regarded. Plus, their review is quite good of my recently published Over Brooklyn Hills, the third book of The Steep climes Quartet, so that speaks well of them, I’d say. Well, of course I would say this, but you can read what they say about my newest book in the four-book series:

Over Brooklyn Hills by David Guenette is a literary climate fiction thriller set in 2035, where climate change is no longer a warning on the horizon but a daily pressure shaping politics, money, migration, housing, violence, and ordinary private life. The story follows Davin Caine, now seventy, as he moves through a Berkshire County strained by rising costs, climate migration, and civic unease, while larger threats involving fossil fuel interests, international tensions, and the climate terrorist group No One is Safe push the novel into darker territory.

Guenette isn’t just interested in disaster as spectacle. He’s interested in the way disaster becomes routine. A hot spell, a housing meeting, a town budget, a person trying to keep a home, a young worker needing air conditioning, a local government trying to respond without losing its soul. These details give the novel its weight. I felt less like I was being shown a future world and more like I was being asked to notice the one already forming around us. That’s unsettling. It’s also the book’s strength.

The writing has a restless, observant quality that I found both engaging and, at times, intentionally uncomfortable. Guenette moves between characters with a wide lens, and his choices make the book feel crowded in the way real life is crowded. Davin’s reflective passages slow the story down in useful ways, giving the thriller elements more moral texture. Then the violence and conspiracy threads cut back in, sharp and ugly, reminding me that this is still a thriller with real stakes. I appreciated that balance. The book doesn’t let anyone stay clean for long, not activists, not politicians, not industries, not regular people trying to get through the week.

I would recommend Over Brooklyn Hills to readers who like climate fiction with a political pulse, especially those who want a thriller that thinks as much as it moves. It will appeal to readers who enjoy near-future stories grounded in realistic social consequences rather than end-of-the-world spectacle. If you like fiction that blends suspense, civic anxiety, personal reflection, and big-picture questions about responsibility, this book has plenty to offer.

Rating: 5

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