Thank you Hachette Audio for the ALC and Grand Central Publishing, #partner, for the advanced copy of The Light Pirate in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing / Hachette Audio
Published: December 6, 2022
Summary:
For fans of Station Eleven and Where the Crawdads Sing comes a hopeful, sweeping story of survival and resilience spanning one extraordinary woman’s lifetime as she navigates the uncertainty, brutality, and arresting beauty of a rapidly changing world.
Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.
As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.
Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
My thoughts:
This is the first book I’ve read by Lily Brooks-Dalton but it certainly will not be the last. I have to say when I was first sent this book, I didn’t give it much thought, just put it on my shelf to post about around the time it released, but then I started hearing about what a great read it was and decided to give it a go and I’m so glad I did…sometimes it’s worth taking that chance!
First, climate fiction is quickly becoming a favorite sub-genre of mine and this is the second or maybe third book I’ve read that specifically deals with hurricanes. Having grown up on Long Island, NY, I’ve been through a few hurricanes myself, nothing to the extent that Florida has, but I could certainly appreciate the danger and gravity of rising sea levels, hurricane seasons that are unpredictable, and infrastructures that are no longer operable. Superstorm Sandy was a wakeup call to us in the Northeast and now that I live right on the water, it’s something that we definitely worry about with every major storm.
I loved the structure of this story and fell hard for the characters we meet here. This is such a powerful, thought-provoking, emotionally wrenching story that I haven’t stopped thinking about. The book follows one girl, Wanda, and her family, and we see how their life is impacted as the world around them is falling apart due to global warming. The author’s ability to write humanity into her characters clearly shows. The characters felt real and relatable and their relationships with one another felt authentic. Wanda is a force to be reckoned with and I loved the way she took on the world around her, despite the way it kept changing.
I’m not usually one to read dystopian books but I absolutely loved this one and am so glad I picked it up. Perhaps because the ideas presented in this book are all too real and this is something we really need to be thinking about and acting on, but this is a book that I know I will be thinking about for a long time to come and most definitely revisiting. Despite the heaviness of this book, there were moments of hope and that is what I am choosing to take away from this book. It’s a beautifully written story with a powerful message and one that I will be recommending to everyone! Definitely a favorite read of the year!
Audio thoughts:
The audio of this book was fantastic! Rosemary Benson really made this book come to life and I was completely captivated by her performance. I had such a hard time putting this one down once I started it that I ended up listening to the book in one day! Her pacing was spot on and she infused just the right amount of emotion and tension into her voice as needed.
