The Descent by Paul E Hardisty

Today I'm sharing my review of the powerful and hard hitting new novel by Paul E Hardisty, The Descent, the prequel to last year's memorable The Forcing, as part of the blog tour. Big thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for the invitation and to the publisher, Orenda Books, for my review copy of the book. The Descent comes out on 29th February.

The Blurb

A young man and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet to uncover the origin of the events that set the world on its course to disaster…

Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation in search for a refuge in the Southern Ocean. Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the world on its course to disaster were the stories his step-father, now long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, The Forcing.

But there are huge gaps in the story that his mother, still alive but old and frail, steadfastly refuses to speak of, even thirty years later. When he discovers evidence that his mother has tried to cover up the truth, he knows that it is time to find out for himself.

Determined to learn what really happened during his mother's escape from the concentration camp to which she and Kweku's father were banished, and their subsequent journey halfway around the world, Kweku and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet. What they find will challenge not only their faith in humanity, but their ability to stay alive.

My Review

Last year's The Forcing presented us with a near future when the world is in chaos. From the details in the blurb for The Descent I was confused how it was being marketed as the  prequel to that. But Paul Hardisty has done something clever here - given us both a prequel and a sequel within the same novel, which I loved. We find out what led to the events in The Forcing and the aftermath of them. You could read and enjoy this without having read The Forcing as it has plenty to say but for a more rounded reading experience and fuller picture I would suggest you start there. 

At the end of The Forcing, David Ashworth and his family arrived in Australia and decided to settle there. Some thirty years on this is still where we find his wife, his sons Kweku and Lewis, and their families. Events at their homestead encourages Kweku to take his family and head back out into the seas to explore what remains of the world and to discover some of his history. It is not an easy journey... We also hear from a woman calling herself 'Sparkplug' and she has a horrifying and shocking story to tell...

Through Kweku's journey we discover what is left of the world and it's a sad situation. There has been so much natural devastation, war, sickness, infertility, hunger, riots, looting and death. We humans have destroyed so much of the world, it's utterly heartbreaking. 

Through Sparkplug's transmissions we learn how things came to be this way. She was there. And it is her story that is truly terrible. It begins in an alternative February 2024. For a large group of powerful businessmen making money, and as much of it as possible, is all that matters. And they are leading the way across the world, influencing how people think, how they behave. For them, behaving appallingly is nothing if it turns a profit. Politicians are weak at best, corrupt at worst. Fear, illness and poverty become the norm. So, it's an alternative, parallel world but it's frightening how much of her story rings true. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the gap gets wider. Sound familiar? And in the process, the world is being destroyed. 

Forty years on, the Alpha Omega group are still active in places, still living in luxury in small pockets of the world. Reality for normal people, however, is very different as Kweku discovers. Food is in short supply, crime is rife, people are desperate. However, there is hope. Successful communities have grown up, where people are working in harmony with each other and with nature. Although living in some of these communities also means a price to pay, as the family discovers, in one memorable place. 

I was lucky enough to hear Paul Hardisty speak at the Bloody Scotland festival, together with two former journalists in a session entitled 'Ripped from the Headlines'. All three had turned to fiction in the hope people would start to listen in a way they don't when simply presented with facts. Paul is a respected environmental scientist who knows what he's talking about and I was really struck by his passion. This book, and The Forcing before it, might be fiction but they are firmly rooted in reality, facts and science. This could so easily be our future, and certainly our grandchildren's future. This should be a wake up call for us. We should be doing what we can individually to help the planet - I don't subscribe to the 'well, the planet's dying anyway so it doesn't matter if I recycle/reduce my food waste/buy second hand or whatever because the planet's already done' school of thought. If we all act mindlessly like that, our world will be definitely be destroyed. But alongside all of that, and more important, we need to be lobbying the people in power - councils, governments, leaders - to take affirmative action. I know there are a lot of issues going on in the world just now that need to be seriously addressed but this has to be one of them. 

I don't have the right words to describe this book, or enough of them. A novel for our time, The Descent has plenty to say about climate damage, greed, power and corruption, but does so in an engaging thriller full of tension and heartstopping moments. Please don't let anything I've said above make you think this isn't an exciting read, because it absolutely is. I just believe it's a very important one too. It will easily be one of my books of the year and I hope you will give it a try. 

The Author

Canadian Paul E Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The first four novels in his Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution all received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Telegraph Thriller of the Year. The Forcing (2023) was a SciFi Now Book of the Month. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, and lives in Western Australia.


Be sure to check out the rest of the tour!