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Revolution Earth

Lambert Nagle,

Alison Ripley Cubitt

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Why we're reading this: A political thriller with environmental themes with an explosive finale.
[close] A political thriller with environmental themes with an explosive finale.

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Jun 01, 2013 Hock Tjoa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is brilliantly written with detailed and cinematic action. The plot takes that action from London to New Zealand, Antarctica (with a base named Hotel India), Australia and several points in between. The co-authors describe cyclists riding on a road that “curled and writhed as if in pain.” They note that one character had “such self-belief that he had no room in his life for anyone but himself”; that, en route to Antarctica, another observed so many blues, “eggshell and powder, dove and peac This is brilliantly written with detailed and cinematic action. The plot takes that action from London to New Zealand, Antarctica (with a base named Hotel India), Australia and several points in between. The co-authors describe cyclists riding on a road that “curled and writhed as if in pain.” They note that one character had “such self-belief that he had no room in his life for anyone but himself”; that, en route to Antarctica, another observed so many blues, “eggshell and powder, dove and peacock, sky and indigo.” It does not escape them that, of all-nighters, “there are only so many you can do in one lifetime”; of parallel universes, that they were too sad to contemplate for “one life was hard enough to get right”; that high up above the scene of the final conflict in Australia pelicans “punctuated the sky like a Morse-code message from Mother Nature herself.” They observe wryly that the British class system extended to flowers (pansies are for grannies), but get into somewhat thin air with the arch note “would any junior HR staff have the nous to query” some company directive.

The novel’s most sympathetic character is an immigrant from Bangladesh who was good enough to win a stage in the Tour de France but, having lost his legs in an accident and fending off cousins who threaten to come to London “expecting good jobs and a place on his sofa for six months,” becomes an entrepreneur; he runs a courier service with riders on bicycles making deliveries all over London. That was how “Jonie,” the life of his company, is killed by a deliberate hit and run driver (who has his reasons, naturally), leaving her lover and fellow courier Cara so distraught that she empties her bank account and goes to New Zealand to discover the “family” Jonie had left. They are a group of vegan, hippie, part-Maori, environmental activists. They attack a chicken farm, described in adequately gruesome detail. In this as in much of the novel harrowing research is clearly evident.

The next target is an Argentine fishing boat. (It is a great inconvenience that the entire continent of South America should exist between New Zealand and Argentina, but the authors plough ahead referring to the rendezvous of eco-activists and fishing boat in the “Southern Ocean.”) Meanwhile, the bad guys are doing terrible damage to the ecosystem while drilling for oil in Antarctica and the worse guys are pulling all-nighters trying to put a positive spin on the news. (We are really in trouble, someone said, when our best minds go into advertizing or, in this case, PR.) Having survived an epic storm in the Southern Ocean, Cara picks up the tracks of Jonie’s killer and heads for the headquarters of the company. There, she and a replenished group of eco-activists turn eco-terrorists (at least one of them does) make their final statement.

Why she does this or why anyone in this novel does anything is the novel’s weak point, and as was observed of Cara one “couldn’t help feeling that what she said came out like she was reading off an auto-cue.” The narrator notices that “Tariq watched Stephen as Stephen watched Cara, both with a tenderness that Cara hadn’t noticed,” but does not succeed in showing us what motivates each of the characters. For Jonie, George and the Planet—this simply does not have enough heart or “emotional connection.” It seems as if the authors have written about all matters of emotion and motivation with their gloves on. Therefore, I have ranked this with four stars; I so very much wanted to give it five.
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Jul 02, 2012 J.C. marked it as to-read

Mar 17, 2013 Roan marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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