NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE

Green chide monsters

- Jayne Nelson

RELEASED 22 JULY

Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Claire North Publisher Orbit

It can’t have escaped anybody’s attention that humans are bad news for planet Earth. Our species is causing so much havoc that we’re hurtling towards utterly preventable destruction – a destruction that, sadly, we’re sharing with every other species at the same time.

According to Notes From The Burning Age, however, we’re heading for a well-deserved comeuppance. That’s because, contrary to what we’ve thought all these years, we’re not the alpha species on dear old Mother Earth after all. Like Godzilla waking from centuries of slumber rather miffed to have reached the Nuclear Age, the “kakuy” of Claire North’s world are prodded awake by our disregard for the environment. After setting eyes on humanity’s polluting, plundering, and slaughtering, they unleash a fiery Hell as a punishment for our wrongdoings, flattening everything in sight. As illogical as that may sound – shades of the infamous US military line “We had to destroy the village in order to save it” – it’s certainly effective, and the kakuy are able to go back to a nice, comfy sleep with our pesky desecration stamped out.

A little disappointingly, perhaps, we don’t get to enjoy the carnage first-hand, as the book picks up many years after the kakuy have smitten humanity with their righteous fury. Instead, we follow the pockets of society that have managed to survive in the ruins – most of whom are utterly terrified of waking the kakuy for a second time. So the giant creatures (some reminiscent of the forest spirit from