JULY 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Charlie Anson does a fantastic job making listeners feel as though they are right beside the author as he travels the length of the Yukon—all 2,000 miles of it—in a canoe. KINGS OF THE YUKON is, ostensibly, the story of the salmon that once thrived in one of North America’s great rivers. During his travels, Weymouth describes, and Anson conveys expertly, the tremendous impact salmon once had on the people who live alongside the Yukon. It’s also the story of the demise of the last great salmon run on the planet—and a story of human adventure, despair, hope, and wonder told in a fluid and entertaining style. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 06/04/2018
British journalist Weymouth ventures 2,000 miles on the Yukon River in an earnest quest to discover whether the Chinook salmon (or king salmon), which is in rapid decline worldwide, can survive in “the last chance on earth to get it right.” Weymouth interweaves his observations on wildlife with an analysis of sociopolitical and environmental factors that affect not just the salmon but also the people whose cultures and economies are built around it. He is adept at technical descriptions of how hatcheries and fishwheels work (“around a central axle, traditionally greased with bear fat, are two baskets formed from a lattice of spruce poles”) and how integral salmon is to the ecosystem (grizzly bears “can get through 40 salmon in eight hours” in order to gain 50% of their body weight before winter). He is knowledgeable about attempts to control salmon that date back centuries and the battle between subsistence fishers and wildlife managers. His most effective vignettes record interactions with those he met on his journey, including Alaskan reality TV stars who battled a raging flood and an 84-year-old woman at her fish camp. This is a richly told history of one of North America’s most remote wildernesses. (May)
From the Publisher
"This is the best kind of travel writing. Weymouth embarks on an ambitious journey - 2,000 miles down the Yukon in a canoe - voyaging, listening and learning. An outstanding book."—Rob Penn, author of The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees
"[A] brilliant account of a summer spent paddling the 2,000-mile length of the Yukon River ... Kings of the Yukon succeeds as an adventure tale, a natural history and a work of art."—Richard Adams Carey, Wall Street Journal
"Dazzling, often in unexpected ways, Adam Weymouth is a nuanced examiner of some of the world's most fraught and urgent questions about the interconnectedness of people and the natural world."—Kamila Shamsie
"Adam Weymouth takes his place beside the great travel writers like Chatwin, Thubron, Leigh Fermor, in one bound. But like their books this is about so much more than just travel."—Susan Hill
JULY 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Charlie Anson does a fantastic job making listeners feel as though they are right beside the author as he travels the length of the Yukon—all 2,000 miles of it—in a canoe. KINGS OF THE YUKON is, ostensibly, the story of the salmon that once thrived in one of North America’s great rivers. During his travels, Weymouth describes, and Anson conveys expertly, the tremendous impact salmon once had on the people who live alongside the Yukon. It’s also the story of the demise of the last great salmon run on the planet—and a story of human adventure, despair, hope, and wonder told in a fluid and entertaining style. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-02-20
An analysis of the long history and perilous future of king salmon as well as an assessment of how the fish's vitality directly correlates to that of Alaska as a whole.Given the subtitle of the book, readers could be forgiven for expecting a straightforward travelogue. While that's certainly part of it—debut author and London-based environmental writer Weymouth canoed roughly 2,000 miles down the famed Yukon River, "the longest salmon run in the world"—the narrative is largely about the fish itself and the people in the villages along the way who rely on it for sustenance, physically and economically. The king salmon is undoubtedly in decline, in both sheer numbers and average poundage. Many readers will assume that climate change is to blame, but the author discovered that the real reasons are much more complicated and go all the way back to the discoveries of gold and oil, when the wild Alaskan frontier became more commercialized and domesticated. Throughout the book, Weymouth introduces us to a memorable cast of colorful characters, including numerous Native families and some reality TV stars (the author posits, only half-jokingly, that Alaska has more per capita than any other state). Readers will also encounter a number of lively history lessons of salmon, the Native peoples of Alaska, and the state itself. As he writes, "the history of the salmon is the history of this land….[The Yukon] intimately connected the lives of a Tlingit Indian at the river's source and a Yupik Eskimo on Alaska's coast, two thousand miles away, even before these people were aware of each other's existence. It is a link to peoples' ancestors and their hope for their children's children."In this timely story "of relationships, of the symbiosis of people and fish, of the imprint that one leaves on the other," Weymouth keeps the pages turning to the very end.
