In this brilliant dystopian epic from Markley (Ohio), spanning from 2013 to 2040, a range of characters attempt to avert catastrophic climate change, sometimes at great personal risk, and with varying degrees of success. There's geologist Tony Pietrus; climate justice activist Kate Morris; Shane Acosta, a sophisticated ecoterrorist; and Ashir al-Hasan, chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. The plot begins in familiar terrain, with scientists sounding the alarm that time is running out. Speculative elements emerge with the meteoric ascent of Morris, whose organization, A Fierce Blue Fire, has made global warming the sole litmus test for its political support. The charismatic Morris also dreams up investment opportunities to benefit neglected and poverty-stricken regions. Interstitial segments, including a newspaper article written by AI about Shane's truck bombing of an Ohio power station in 2030, add to the sense of frightening plausibility. Meanwhile, the bureaucratic al-Hasan comments in a memo on the "inanity and profiteering that surround the legislative process," while Pietrus, whose work on methane clathrates is quietly incorporated into government models, remains divisive and marginalized. Markley makes this anything but didactic; his nuanced characterizations of individuals with different approaches to the existential threat make the perils they encounter feel real as they navigate cover-ups and lies. It's a disturbing tour de force. (Jan.)

Markley's (Ohio) chilling story is an all-too-possible story of the real dangers of rampant climate change. The story begins just beyond the present day. Global warming brings natural disasters of ever-increasing violence. Fire, floods, rising sea levels, and dust storms create global food shortages. Species extinctions occur every day. Multiple activist groups work toward solutions, but each group is too small to gain traction. Meanwhile, big corporations, evangelical religion, and dirty politics allow business as usual, contributing an increasing amount of carbon to an already saturated atmosphere. The escalation of violent government responses and catastrophic weather events ultimately bring all parties to the bargaining table, but it may be too late to save the planet and future generations. A cast of 14 skilled narrators give voice to the novel's many characters, providing multiple viewpoints, expressing competing values and interests, and capturing their attempts to work toward solutions. The full cast allows listeners to distinguish between the many characters--no small feat in a novel of this size. VERDICT This audio disturbs, enlightens, infuriates, and invigorates. A timely and compelling addition to any public library collection.--Joanna M. Burkhardt

Markley's second novel is reminiscent of his first (Ohio, 2018)--ambitious, sprawling, chock full of characters--but all turned up to eleven. Spanning 2013-39, Deluge charts the devastation of unchecked climate change and the continued fracturing of society that comes with it. The story starts with scientist Tony Pietrus, who issues a dire warning that's dismissed as alarmist, and then fans out to a host of other characters: charismatic climate activist Kate Morris; Shane Acosta, founder of an ecoterrorist organization; Keeper, who's fighting drug addiction and struggling to make a living; the Pastor, an actor turned Christian, white supremacist presidential hopeful. As fires, dust bowls, hurricanes, and other startling weather events ramp up, the political elite and their constituents retreat further to the left and right, and the coinciding social terror Markley tracks is all the more upsetting because of its plausibility. Readers would do well to keep the book's multiple viewpoints sorted from the beginning and should know that, with unrelenting doom throughout its 800-plus pages, this is a demanding but worthwhile read.

A hyper-realistic, alarming vision of the world destabilized by climate change. This sprawling novel, about 900 pages long, covers three decades of American life, beginning in 2013, as partisan divisions widen and the effects of rising global temperatures become more pronounced, and extending to a cataclysmic near future marked by social and ecological collapse. The large cast of characters introduced here includes climate scientists, domestic terrorists, political leaders of various stripes, and a gaggle of regular citizens caught up in the apocalyptic maelstrom. Shifting points of view are set against newspaper articles and government reports as the intricacies of the plot unfold and the dramatic intersection of the central characters' lives is gradually revealed. This is an exhaustively researched book, crammed full of commentary and speculation on contemporary trends: widening wealth gaps, political polarization, the inefficacy of reformist measures to address environmental threats, the blinkered resistance of conservative forces, the inevitability of violent assaults on scapegoats as currents of irrationality pulse through the nation. There are intriguing surprises in this chronicle of accelerating disorder and anomie, and the conclusion rewards those who persevere through the thickets of character development, though overall the novel has difficulty sustaining narrative momentum, and its extraordinary length seems, at last, rather unjustified. A more streamlined story that felt less inclined to bolster its authority with mountains of detail would likely have been more powerful. Nevertheless, the author has produced a highly memorable invention in a character named Kate Morris, a charismatic eco-activist with a ferocious clarity of purpose. Her narrative, taken on its own, is unusually vivid and distills much of what the novel seems to care about most: warning of massive disruptions to our civilization in the decades to come and exploring possibilities for maintaining our humanity as we struggle to manage them. An ambitious rendering of a forbidding future and the public and private challenges that will define it. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.