Mixed feelings, thy name is Camp Zero.
The writing is beautiful and tight. Sterling has clearly studied the craft in depth and the book has a technical precision to it that’s really admirable. There were many times in this book when I read a sentence and thought “wow, that’s a beautiful/sharp/moving way to say that”.
The plot is interesting. In a climate-change ravaged near future, sex worker Rose is sent to Canada’s Camp Zero by a former patron to keep an eye on the head architect. He thinks he’s building a school, a haven away from extreme weather patterns. The odd behavior of the camp employees, including the school’s new professor Grant, points to something far more sinister. Meanwhile, an unnamed narrator occasionally details a creepy story of a remote military outpost that may or may not be connected to it all.
It’s hard to take modern eco-fiction seriously once you’ve read Octavia Butler’s Parables, I think. Rehashing points made by forward thinkers in the late 90s only highlights how little imagination and motivation we currently have as a society when it comes to finding solutions for the troubled future we’ve created for ourselves. This book wants to be an interrogation of climate change’s impact on society, but instead, it just wallows in the same self-centered doom that got us here to begin with.
Also, I was bored or annoyed by a lot of the tropes and character cliches in this, including;
- Mixed Asian/white protagonist as exoticized sex worker trying to rescue her poor refugee mother
- Sad rich white boy who treats women hatefully tries to redeem himself through teaching the poors and pretending he doesn’t have money
- Angry sort-of-feminist scientists who rob and murder men but it’s okay because all men are creeps
- Random white girl indulging in literal savagery, but it’s okay because she’s special
- Weird white fetish-ridden billionaire is actually smart and desirable instead of just weird
- Only one Black person in the future, who has no purpose outside of being described as Black at the beginning of the book and never mentioned again
- Also no Indigenous folks, even though this clearly takes place on their (ironically) acknowledged land.
sigh
There are a lot of places where the writing shines past these things, but overall the book is just a bit socially oblivious, which is the exact opposite of what it’s trying to be. Add that to the tumbledown ending and the overall effect is one of “girl, I guess.”
Hope and optimism to Camp Zero.
(Beautiful people! This dystopia didn’t have enough imagination for me, but if you want to check out a list of diverse dystopias that go far beyond the limitations of our present inequal reality, check out this booklist at the Equal Opportunity Bookshop. Any purchase made from a link you find on this site will result in a commission being paid, which I use to buy more books that I then review in the hopes of getting you to buy more books. It’s a beautiful life cycle. In the meantime, whether or not you click a link, go and read something good. Peace!)
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