The Trials of Koli by M.R. Carey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think it needs to be said: trilogies need to come back.

Certain stories require more page space. This second book continues The Book of Koli in a wonderful way. A sympathetic character in Koli is given a lot more dimension by other PoVs, but what really makes this shine is all the time and other character development out in the wide world of Ingland. :)

I'm not entirely certain how far in the future this Earth is, but all the remnants of high-tech weaponry and quasi-AI and massively altered plant and animal life make this a RICH setting to tell a big post-apocalyptic world. And that's just the first book.

This one quite naturally widens our scope and we see how several other sides live in this twilight of humanity.

I should mention that the text is mostly written by Koli who is "creatively literate" and maybe not surprisingly, there is plenty of evidence of language drift.

How cool is that? Most authors don't bother, but the evidence for some deep worldbuilding is everywhere in these. Just what happened in the Unfinished War? So many things combined to spell out our slow demise.

By just getting out on their own, fighting to live another day, I'm really invested in the story. I had a very good time.

That being said, this IS the second book. It doesn't stand on its own. But then, it does follow a very old tradition and I really don't mind it at all. We could have had one HUGE book with all three combined or we could them as they are split up here. To me, it's all one big story and I'm rocking to it. :)

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