THE CARBON DIARIES 2017
by Saci Lloyd
Two years have passed since the Carbon Diaries 2015 (2009), and Laura just wants to play punk music. With carbon rationing and the Thames flooding constantly, London’s not like it used to be. Laura and her loved ones experience drought, flood, malaria, refugee-camp internment and recurring police brutality. Refugees from global drought pour into Europe, sparking increased political power for anti-immigrant racists. But despite the novel’s grim dystopianism—hope lying only in a forward-into-the-past mentality that has Londoners planting cabbages on rooftops—Laura’s story features unexpected moral complexity. She and her friends repeatedly debate the obligations of the privileged in a world gone horribly wrong. Should they join the anti-government terrorists, march against United Front racists, live in vegan squats, feed refugees in the Sudan or just live their punk-rock student lives? It’s complicated, Laura realizes—no one answer is right. If there’s any hope in this dizzying, brilliantly drawn and terrifyingly possible near-future, it’s the ability of even selfish people to passionately throw themselves against overwhelming odds. Captivating. (Science fiction. 12-15)