Wel­ling­ton writers increas­ingly (and entirely jus­ti­fi­ably) are view­ing the ongo­ing cli­mate dis­aster as a rich source of mater­i­al for cre­at­ing intriguing, ima­gin­at­ive spec­u­lat­ive fic­tion. Based in future worlds where human­ity has failed to stop a cata­stroph­ic, civil­iz­a­tion-alter­ing change in the cli­mate sys­tem, these stor­ies of what might be, if we don’t sort our shit out, right now.

Recently, Kirsten McDou­gall’s third nov­el She’s a Killer has delved into the near-future world of ‘wealthugees’ escap­ing cli­mate calam­ity by escap­ing to NZ. Lawrence Pratch­ett’s The Burn­ing River came out a couple of years back, and is set in a more dis­tant time, when the world has heated up to the point where civil­iz­a­tion has col­lapsed and wild-fires run rampant across the land. There’s also the likes of Andi C. Buchanan’s and Patri­cia Grace’s short stor­ies On the Right Track and The Unre­membered, and Tim Jones’ novella Where We Land (and prob­ably a bunch more that I’ve missed or over­looked).

Join­ing the ranks of Wel­ling­ton-based cli-fi authors is Jill­ian Web­ster with her debut nov­el – The Weight of a Thou­sand Oceans. This story set is at the Lawrence Pratch­ett end of the spec­u­lat­ive pen­du­lum: the world is hot­ter and our tech­no­lo­gic­al, wired civil­isa­tion has col­lapsed over a peri­od of time now referred to as “The End” A greatly reduced pop­u­la­tion ekes out a sub­sist­ence liv­ing on the remain­ing bits of land that haven’t been inund­ated by sea-level rise.

Our prot­ag­on­ist is Maia, a young woman who lives with her grand­fath­er in a hut in the South­ern Islands (both the North and South Islands have been archipela­gos unto them­selves, their single land­masses turn­ing into many as the rising sea sep­ar­ated regions from each oth­er, res­ult­ing in the North­ern and South­ern Islands). It would be a fair bet that none of NZ’s coastal cit­ies or towns have sur­vived this inund­a­tion. It was nice know­ing ye, Wel­ling­ton.

Mai­a’s grand­fath­er is unwell, his depend­ency on pain-killing marijuana increas­ing as he becomes frail­er with each passing week. Mai­a’s future is thus a top­ic of much dis­cus­sion – liv­ing a alone isn’t really an option, but her grand­father­’s sug­ges­tion that she move to live with one of the North­ern Tribes leaves Maia cold. She wants to explore, to ven­ture out into the wider world, and per­haps go to the dis­tant Old Arc­tic Circle, where it’s rumoured that civil­isa­tion is being rekindled.

While all this is going on, Maia is hav­ing dreams and strange vis­ions that hint at … some­thing? That she’s suf­fer­ing night­mares and hal­lu­cin­a­tions. Or is there more to it? (Hope­fully not too much of a spoil­er: there’s a lot more to it).

Maia is fant­ast­ic prot­ag­on­ist, all the things you want when a book is so heav­ily focused on a spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter: thought­ful, strong-willed, curi­ous, but thank­fully not a full-fledged Mary Sue. She has moments of self-doubt, of fear, and times when she makes dubi­ous spur-of-the moment decisions that (just about lit­er­ally) plunge her into deep trouble.

Once Mai­a’s made up her mind as to what she wants to do, the story starts to rol­lick along. There’s pir­ates, sunken cit­ies and start­ling rev­el­a­tions. There’s more mys­ter­i­ous vis­ions and dreams. There’s a giant garbage patch in the sea (which is, depress­ingly, already a real thing, but greatly expan­ded in this story, and which plays a pivotal role).

A float­ing garbage patch

In these middle and lat­ter sec­tions of the book, Maia also exper­i­ences her first of love and sex. I did­n’t do any real back­ground read­ing on the book or author before delving into the book and it was inter­est­ing read­ing it without any con­text as to what the tar­get audi­ence might be. It feels a little young adulty, but could well slot into the (hip-new-thing) cat­egory of new adult. Or just some stand­ard “grown-up’ cli-fi. But also, labels, pffft.

(Also, a shout out to the book design­er, Murphy Rae. “Don’t judge a book by its cov­er” is the cliche, but we all do, of course, and the imagery and designs of this book and its sequel The Burn of a Thou­sand Suns are gor­geous. The mes­mer­ising long-tentacled jelly­fish that adorns the cov­er of Thou­sand Oceans is bright and allur­ing, con­tras­ted against a back­ground of dark ocean water, con­vey­ing a sim­il­ar dicho­tomy of beauty and just-below-the-sur­face danger that is reflec­ted in Mai­a’s own char­ac­ter.)

Where that mix of poten­tial power and youth­ful naiv­ete will lead Maia becomes a ques­tion for the future, as her ini­tial plans are derailed by the new emo­tion­al ties forged over the course of her adven­tures. Good news, then, that the sequel (the afore­men­tioned The Burn of a Thou­sand Suns) is already avail­able, with the third instal­ment planned for 2002. Either semi-binge now and wait for the denoue­ment when it arrives (arrgh! it’s like wait­ing for new Suc­ces­sion epis­odes!), or wait for that third volume to drop and read in one long bliss­ful rhaps­ody.

There’s adven­ture, romance, tragedy, mys­tery and, yes, there’s sex. If they tick your boxes, this a book (and series) for you.

And, good news for you, read­er, we have cop­ies of both the first two books in the For­got­ten Ones series to give away! Just flick an email to giveaways@wellingtonista.com with the sub­ject “for­got­ten ones giveaway” and we’ll put you in the draw. (And we prom­ise won’t add you to any mail­ing list, or any­thing.)

If you don’t win, you can pur­chase the books online from Mighty Ape.

And find out more about Jill­ian on her web­site.