Notes from the Burning Age, originally published in 2021, is the twenty-third novel by prolific and acclaimed British genre author Catherine Webb, as well as the ninth under their preferred pen-name of Claire North, which they used for more interesting, literary and experimental standalone fiction. Under this name they published their best-known and biggest-selling novel, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, as well as The Sudden Appearance of Hope, The Pursuit of William Abbey and 84K. More recently they published their first space opera, Slow Gods, and this year's time travel story, As We Fall Through Time. The North novels exist at an intersection between mass-market appeal and niche, poetic thoughtfulness, and Notes is no different.
Notes from the Burning Age feels like a post-apocalyptic novel, with our age reduced to a rumoured historical epoch, but the book takes a more original tack by showing that quite a lot of knowledge from our time has survived. The Medj are keen to share that information and technology which can make humanity better - solar power, bicycles, electric vehicle engines, books - but are also withholding anything that could be destructive, such as internal combustion engines, nuclear weapons, high explosives, social media and genetic engineering. Of course, maintaining the dividing lines is hard, and only possible by imposing order through religion, with the carrot of peaceful technology and trade backed up by the stick of the kakuy returning to destroy humanity once and for all.
Our narrator, Ven Marzouki, was nearly killed in a forest fire as a child and, at key moment, thought he saw the kakuy of the forest. But as an adult he is not certain if he saw something real or experienced the trauma of a child faced with certain death. His uncertainties eventually drive him to the great city of Vien, capital of Maze, where he witnesses an uneasy revolution, as the sceptical Brotherhood seeks to raise the supremacy of the human spirit over what they see as superstition, if not an outright conspiracy to keep humanity in the dark ages. Ven's knowledge of ancient artifacts attracts the attention of Georg Mestri, ostensibly an advisor to the Brotherhood but Ven quickly realises he is the hidden power behind the throne. Mestri finds Ven's scepticism of the Brotherhood's motives and ambitions amusing, but Ven's ability to tease out secrets becomes invaluable and he ascends the ranks to become Georg's closest advisor.
The novel unfolds in several sections. The opening setup chapters establish this strange world, effectively a post-apocalyptic setting on the verge of transitioning into a utopia, until what feels like a rising oligarch class decide that the old world where a tiny minority held power and wealth and everyone else had to make do the best they could was actually a great idea. The middle sections depict Ven's life in the Brotherhood, and his reluctant fascination as the organisation has to face what should be a Herculean task - convincing the masses to hand over their power and decision-making to a tiny privileged minority - but finding it surprisingly easy with the media as willing accomplices. It doesn't help that the other nations of what is (fairly clearly) Europe seem baffled as to why one of their nation-states would decide to embrace authoritarianism with such gusto and are slow to react to it.
Lurking over all, of course, is the threat of the kakuy. Were they real? Are they a lie drummed up to keep humanity in check and stop it repeating the mistakes of the past? Or are they simply a metaphor for the very real, devastating consequences of humanity's rapaciousness, names given to natural-but-terrifying forest fires, landslides, glacier collapses and floods? The book teases at possible answers several times but much is left up to the reader.
North is one of the best prose stylists working in SFF today, especially at the more commercial end, and as usual the novel is a pleasure to read. Dialogue is strong, especially in the battles of wits and wills between Ven and Georg, though the characterisation of some of the other players can be a mixed bag. A substantial chunk of the book's narrative twists depend on the actions of Ven's childhood friend Yue, a character who has barely any page time and we have to keep hearing about her actions after the fact, or through reports. On one level this works as we are as in the dark about what's going on as Ven (as a first-person novel, this makes sense), on another it means a few too many unlikely coincidences and too many times that Ven's fat is pulled out of the fire rather than him saving himself.
This passiveness can be grating, but it makes sense. Ven researches, watches and analyses before drawing any conclusions over what action to take. His methodical approach is fascinating, before events spiral out of control and the story briefly becomes an action novel, with exciting car and bicycle chases, huge battles (mostly off-page) and clandestine fistfights on the snowy streets of European capitals. One of the pleasures of the novel is its constant wrong-footing of the reader with genre expectations, especially how what appears to be a post-apocalyptic dystopia turned political treatise tailored for the moment (though North shouldn't be blamed that 2026 feels closer to the novel's setting than even five years ago did) metamorphoses into a Cold War thriller, and a good one at that. Given how most of North's work can be slotted into different genres, this one book being a chameleon that twists between different forms is refreshingly different, and mostly successful, even if it makes the book harder to pin down.
Notes from the Burning Age (****) is unusually different from most of North's other books, freer to spin between different genres and moving between sombre character introspection, musings on climate collapse and technology misuse, and fun battles of wills between secret agents trying to slip across eastern European borders. The book feels like it briefly circles clunky modern metaphors before North decides those would be too on-the-nose and heads in other, more interesting directions. Not as immediately impactful as the likes of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, this is still a fascinating, highly readable novel, packing in a lot of interesting ideas explored with delicious prose skills. It's just not their best work.
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