The Book of Koli
The Book of Koli by M R Carey, is the first volume of The Ramparts trilogy, the last of which, The Fall of Koli, has just been published.
Many years ago, in discussion about there being only a set number of story plots (sometimes six it’s claimed, sometimes seven) an author friend provided the following example for one of them.
A boy leaves home, a stranger comes to town.
Or, as Joseph Campbell sums it up in his seminal 1949 book on the commonalty of the hero story in mythologies, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
This quest plot is often tied to a coming-of-age storyline and The Book of Koli certainly qualifies as one of these.
The Koli of the title inhabits a future dystopian world recovering from a cataclysmic war, and ecological disaster (of course), now centuries in the past. It has left humanity clinging on in isolated settlements surrounded by lethal genetically altered forests and vicious hybrid creatures. Koli’s home, Mythen Rood, (which would appear to be a future version of the present-day town of Mytholmroyd located in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire) functions as a self-sustaining feudal village. One family, who by dint of controlling the few bits of old technology (old-tech) still functioning, run things. It’s population, numbered presently at a couple hundred, has been steadily declining. Year on year fewer and fewer babies are being born. This low birth rate is apparently a common situation. The human race is slowly sinking into extinction.
Koli is our narrator, relating his story to us from some point in the future, presumably after a dramatic, and world altering, conclusive event. The story begins with the approaching of the coming-of-age ceremony that all children of the village undergo on upon turning fifteen. This precipitates actions on Koli’s part that result in him having to leave Mythen Rood, and so to the start of his adventure.
In many cultures those who are undergoing the journey from child to adulthood are believed to be aided by spirit guides.
In Koli’s case he has two such ‘guides’. One is a bit of ‘old-tech’, in the form of a hand-held entertainment unit. This is inhabited by Monono, a programmed construct based on a Japanese teen popstar, who would have existed in what would appear to be our near future. Their interactions are the occasion of much humour in this story.
The other ‘guide’ takes the form of Ursula, a sort of travelling wise-woman and healer. She is a survivor from what might have been the last outpost of scientific knowledge located on the Isle of Man and is in command of a surviving old-tech mechanical known as the Drudge. This is a walking, all bells and whistles, Swiss Army knife- like bit of deadly machinery.
Monono and Ursula are not only his guides but his comrades as well, who often, in a literally deus ex machina manner, save his bacon.
The author, M R Carey, has had a long career as a writer of graphic novels, much of it for D C and Marvel comics. This shows in the strong visual scene settings in which the often frenetic and violent action takes place. This comic book background might also, along with having a teenage protagonist, account for the Young Adult novel feel the Rampart series possesses.
His break through novel of 2014, The Girl with All the Gifts, a zombie apocalypse outing that was a cut above the usual fare and along with its companion volume, The Boy on the Bridge, 2017, feel a bit like possible precursors to the world Koli inhabits.
This is a world somewhat reminiscent of Margaret Atwood created in her MaddAddam Trilogy, but with less in the way of dystopian political and ecological warnings laid on. There is something of the inevitable in Carey’s future world as opposed to Atwood’s sense of an avoidable wrong turn. This feeling of fait accompli allows the reader to relax into the adventure story aspect of the Koli books in a way that isn’t quite possible with Atwood’s.
The Book of Koli published in paperback 2020 by Orbit, £8.99 in the UK and $16.99 in the US
The Trials of Koli published in paperback by Orbit 2020 £8.99 and $16.99 respectively
The Fall of Koli published March 2021 by Orbit in paperback £9.99 and $16.99