Publishers Weekly
09/11/2023
Doctorow (Red Team Blues) plausibly imagines a near future in which catastrophic climate change has made multiple coastal cities around the world uninhabitable. Though the passage of a Green New Deal in the U.S. has helped combat rising temperatures, it has also stoked political fury on the aging right. Brooks Palazzo became an orphan at nine years old after his environmentalist parents died while fighting wildfires and restoring habitats in Canada. He moved in with his grandfather Richard, an abusive, unrepentant MAGA supporter, in Burbank, Calif. Now 19 and about to finish high school, Brooks stumbles on an attempt to sabotage his school’s solar panels—and recognizes the perpetrator as one of Richard’s friends. Shortly after Brooks thwarts this terrorist, Richard dies and Brooks inherits his house. With newfound resources at his fingertips, he becomes an activist and unlikely hero as the impending arrival of a refugee caravan raises political tensions. Brooks’s bravery and idealism are admirable and, though a romantic subplot feels like a distraction, Doctorow does a solid job of imagining how acting both locally and globally in the face of environmental catastrophe can make a difference. Fans of Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 will want to check this out. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"Completely delightful...Neither utopian nor dystopian, it portrays life in SoCal in a future woven from our successes (Green New Deal!), failures (climate chaos anyway), and unresolved conflicts (old MAGA dudes). I loved it."
— Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things To Me and A Paradise Built In Hell
“This book looks like our future and feels like our present—it’s an unforgettable vision of what could be.”—Kim Stanley Robinson
"Sometimes I think that Cory Doctorow is the last real optimist and idealist left in science fiction" - Locus
"[The Lost Cause] tells a thought-provoking story, with a message of hope in a near-future that looks increasingly bleak."—Library Journal, starred review
Library Journal
★ 10/01/2023
In the 2050s, the U.S. is both sinking and burning due to climate change. Successive liberal governments have done their best to create a better future for everyone, alternating with die-hard conservative administrations that do their damndest to reverse the tides. Brooks Palazzo, a young man trying to make his city a better and more inviting place, is caught in the crossfire between welcoming a caravan of internal refugees and his grandfather's friends in their faded red caps and their agitation to keep their city for people just like them. Brooks and his friends have youth, experience, and above all drive, but his granddad's buddies still have guns stashed in the basement and are itching to go out in a blaze of glory. As grim as the setting is, because the novel is told from the perspective of Brooks and his friends, it's surprisingly hopeful as it delivers a well-told story with plenty of dramatic tension that still manages to convey the message that dealing with entrenched politics is a marathon race, the surest way to lose is to stop running. VERDICT Doctorow (Red Team Blues) tells a thought-provoking story, with a message of hope in a near-future that looks increasingly bleak.—Marlene Harris
