Above the Ether

The City Where We Once Lived #0

by Eric Barnes

A mesmerizing novel of unfolding dystopia amid the effects of climate change in a world very like our own, for readers of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. In this prequel to Eric Barnes's acclaimed cli-fi novel The City Where We Once Lived, six sets of characters move through a landscape and a country just beginning to show the signs of cataclysmic change. A father and his young children fleeing a tsunami after a massive earthquake in the Gulf. A woman and her husband punishing themselves without relent for the loss of both their sons to addiction, while wildfires slowly burn closer to their family home. A brilliant investor, assessing opportunity in the risk to crops, homes, cities, industries, and infrastructure, working in the silent comfort of her office sixty floors up in the scorching air. A doctor and his wife stuck in a refugee camp for immigrants somewhere in a southern desert. Two young men working the rides for a roadside carnival, one escaping a brutal past, the other a racist present. The manager of a chain of nondescript fast-food restaurants in a city ravaged by the relentless wind.. While every night the news alternates images of tsunami destruction with the baseball scores, the characters converge on a city where the forces of change have already broken—a city half abandoned, with one part left to be scavenged as the levee system protecting it slowly fails—until, in their vehicles on the highway that runs through it, they witness the approach of what looks to be just one more violent storm.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Post Apocalyptic, Fantasy, Climate Change Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 4, 2019

About the author

Eric Barnes is writer of the novels The City Where We Once Lived (Arcade Publishing), Above the Ether (Arcade Publishing), Something Pretty, Something Beautiful (Outpost19) and Shimmer (Unbridled Books), an IndieNext Pick.

Emily St. John Mandel, author of STATION ELEVEN, said about The City Where We Once Lived: “Barnes's new novel is a rare and truly original work: a hard-edged fable, tender and unflinching, in which a man's descent and renewal is mirrored by his city. An eerie, beautifully written, and profoundly humane book.”

Barnes has also published numerous short stories, and works as CEO of The Daily Memphian, host of Behind the Headlines, and publisher of a number of community newspapers.

Praise for Above the Ether:

“Barnes’ spare and chilling prose flows from one horrific scene to another without, surprisingly, alienating his readers, perhaps because the heart of his narrative ultimately reveals an abiding faith in the power of human compassion. A first-rate apocalyptic page-turner.” - Booklist

“In twenty years—or less—people will have a hard time believing that this is a work of the imagination; that's how convincingly Barnes plays out the signs and omens of our times. That he conjures this dark forecast without ever naming a soul or the cities they live in does not make the story more otherworldly, but only more chillingly recognizable.” - Tim Johnston, NY Times bestselling author of THE CURRENT

“Above the Ether depicts a dystopia more terrifying because of its proximity to our own, yet this novel is also saturated by hope. In this world, people can rise above their pasts, and humanity can endure change and hardship. Barnes is also just a terrific writer of both story and sentence.” - Elise Blackwell, author of THE LOWER QUARTER and HUNGER

“The world of Eric Barnes’ novel Above the Ether suffers destruction of Biblical proportions. Flood, fire, pestilence, famine — the rolling cataclysms have an Old Testament tenor and scope. Though the novel builds in intensity as the story lines interweave, it derives its power from the poetic quality of its language.” - Chapter 16

Praise for The City Where We Once Lived:

“Written in a gorgeously spare language that perfectly reflects the dystopic future this novel depicts, The City Where We Once Lived kept me enthralled throughout. At the core is a deep and admirable compassion for humanity.” - Chris Offutt, author of COUNTRY DARK

"A stunningly-written tale of loss and grief." - Lindsay Moran, former CIA operative and author of BLOWING MY COVER

"Spare and elegant, Eric Barnes shows us what it means to inhabit - a building, a city, a life. And also what it means to be inhabited - by memories, by ghosts, and maybe, just maybe, by hope." - Elise Blackwell, author of THE LOWER QUARTER

“An intensely envisioned work of dystopian realism and American desolation, beautifully drawn from the slow-motion apocalypse of everyday life.” - Christopher Brown, author of TROPIC OF KANSAS

"A controlled burn of a book, full of horror and sadness and, once the fire dies down, the beauty of new growth. In the tradition of J.G. Ballard and Margaret Atwood, Eric Barnes gives us a dying neighborhood of outcasts who save the world that has cast them out." - John Feffer, author of SPLINTERLANDS

“With deft prose and a discerning voice, The City Where We Once Lived is a taut examination of the archetypes and rituals that form the landscape of community.” - Courtney Miller Santo, author of THREE STORY HOUSE and THE ROOTS OF THE OLIVE TREE

"The voice is appealingly quiet, the atmosphere dreamlike, but the premise of poisoned ground, weather gone haywire, and a government that has thrown up its hands, is frighteningly real." - James Whorton, author of APPROXIMATELY HEAVEN, FRANKLAND and ANGELA SLOAN

"Eric Barnes' The City Where We Once Lived is a most original novel, surprising and fierce - a dazzling puzzle of grief and utopia, dystopia and hope." - Minna Zallma

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book through Goodreads First Reads.

This book reminded me a lot of The Road with the nameless characters and locations. However, the structure worked for that book, I'm not so sure it worked as well with this one. One of my favorite genres is dystopian/post apocalyptic so I was really excited that I had the opportunity to read Above the Ether. However, I was a bit disappointed with how everything came together. Yes, there is some sort of tie in, with all the characters, by the end of the book but it's a long, confusing time to get there.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

At once achingly beautiful and terribly sad.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are so many things I want to relay about Above the Ether by Eric Barnes, that I am not quite sure I can give this book the justice it deserves. Set in the near future, we are thrust into the lives of ordinary everyday people faced with a ravaging earth. There are some characters I can sympathize with while others not so much. A father tries to protect his children from the floods as they abandon their home looking for safety. A married couple suffering the devastating loss of both of their sons while the landscape around them burns. A carousel worker suffering through his own loss and feels so alone. A trader who makes money over the suffering of others. These are just some of the characters explored in an ever changing world.

Eric Barnes has created an atmospheric and shocking story, that even though is fiction and years ahead of us, it is also quite relevant in today’s world. He shows, in his lyrical prose, the stark realities of life, the desolation and destruction of a ravaged earth, the sense of doom, and the sheer terror people face day to day as they try to live in a world intent on destruction. One thing that really struck a chord in me is these are ordinary people. People that I might run across every day and not realize they are suffering through their own pain. I don’t think we ever really think about the person next to us and Barnes shows the reality of this by not naming his characters. They are just faces in a crowd trying to live life the best they know how even if they are silently suffering inside.

Every character in this story is really fleshed out and you can feel their pain and suffering. Even though there might be a character or two I did not like, I can also understand what made them this way. While there are things I really enjoyed about this story, there are also a few things that did make me cringe especially when it came to the investor and the boy. Although the boy was never given an exact age, for me it bordered on not being age appropriate. Other than that one piece of information, I can not find anything else that would deter someone from reading this story. I definitely recommend if you are looking for something different and so so mainstream Dystopian.

[Anissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that I'm a climate fiction fan never sounds quite right to me because they're usually disastrous human extinction events that completely untether modern civilizations and I find them fairly terrifying, but I am drawn to them. So when I saw this, I knew I needed to read it. I have to admit that it was actually hard to read quickly because it was so vivid even though the prose was stark. I'd never have expected that dandelions could be expressed as something so suffocating and relentless. I needed to put this down a few times but it stayed in my mind & pulled me back. Once finished, I needed a day to think about what I wanted to say about it.

The dire situation presaged an ever closer, ever inescapable cataclysm and people were simply existing in it with varying levels of acknowledgement. Each of the characters followed are also not just dealing with the environmental changes, they're dealing with fractured families, estranged or missing relatives, financial insecurities, loneliness, isolation and for one, in particular, exercising the power they have over those who are desperate.

This is my first read by Barnes and I'd read another. I'll likely have to pick up his The City Where We Once Lived as I want to know what happens next. Or rather, I need to know. Recommended.

Many thanks to the publisher for an Advanced Review Copy.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy dystopian genre, all these different ways to end the world as we know it. Climate is one way to go. Popular enough to command its own subgenre, climate related science fiction can be very compelling, possibly because it’s so tragically realistic. In this book the global warming is very real and it is devastating. Wild fires, raising waters (albeit not in a geographical proximity that would have been a practical solution to both), tsunamis, earthquakes, storms and so on. There is a city (nameless as all things are in this book) that is separated into a distinct North and South end, one inhabitable, one abandoned. But people survive…like they tend to. And it is their journeys through this scarred new world that comprise this novel. The book is made up of separate, occasionally intersecting narratives following different survivors and their stories. All of them are nameless, but nevertheless distinct and compelling. Although the lack of names does contribute to a general distance in the ambiance, it is obviously a stylistic choice as is the clipped manner of dialogue and short almost staccato like sentence structure. I enjoyed it in a way, it provided a certain succinctness to the narration, but for a dialogue it didn’t work to the same extent, instead making it seem like every single otherwise completely singular individual spoke exactly alike. The other thing is that the book and the stories within it seem very episodic, like sketches more so than actually proper plots. It helps to know (something inexplicably omitted in the description) that this book is set in the same universe as Barnes’ previous book, information I found out on GR after the fact. Not sure if the two are sequential or merely parallel, but maybe both provide a more complete picture. Or maybe both are just collections of character journeys. It works as is, especially if you’re in a mood for a relentlessly bleak near dystopian future that’s entirely too plausible for anyone following the news. But it is all very one note, very sad note, quite heavy and probably not for everyone. Gimmicks aside, it’s well written, but words like entertaining or enjoyable wouldn’t really be the appropriate choices to describe this book. Not really climate sci fi either, too close to reality. It reads very quickly too. But by no means an easy single sitting one afternoon read. Thanks Netgalley.

[Richard Dominguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this prequel, even though I have yet to read the first book in the series "The City Where We Once Lived".
This is a purely character driven story and considering that none of the characters have names the characters are pure adrenaline. A huge kudos to the author for giving me the first story I have read with no names. A bold move indeed and it works beautifully.
The 6 main characters are all dealing with the global disasters in their own way. They are well written, unique and multi layered, as we get to know them, not by their names but by their circumstances.
Although the story starts in the mist of disaster it does build nicely, giving the reader a chance to know the participants and their circumstances.
I knew within the first 3 pages that I was hooked and I was not going to put the book down till I was done.
Huge praises as this is going up as my favorite read of 2022 (so far) and an easy, very easy recommendation to all readers.

[Tonstant Weader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Above the Ether takes place the day after tomorrow, or so it seems. An earthquake in the gulf at the same time as a hurricane creates an epic wave that devours the gulf coast. Never-ending fires render communities unlivable. Drought devastates farmland. Dandelions and mollusks and nature in general seems to have run amok. Eric Barnes describes a dystopic future that is only a tick of the clock from our present, a future where the climate catastrophe we have done little to avoid arrives. And yet, Barnes does not use the word climate once. This is not a polemic, this is a story.

Above the Ether follows six narratives, a father and his kids fleeing the gulf, a husband and wife seeking their runaway son, a callous investor checking out the potential for disaster dividends, refugees finally getting their release from a border detention facility, carnival workers working their route, and a restaurant manager just doing his job as best he can. These disparate people move by happenstance and necessity toward an unnamed city where they converge in a crisis, finding hope in the midst of despair.

Nothing and no one has a name. People are described solely by the roles. Every location is unnamed, leaving it to us to situate it in our own cultural geography. So why is it so compelling? Why did I read this in one sitting, skipping dinner and reading to the end? I think we value what we work for.



I remember being taught to put a notecard over the bottom third of the text while I was studying, covering the serifs that make reading easier. My professor explained that if I was forced to engage and infer while I was reading, I would remember what I studied better. He also said in the end, I would learn to read faster. He was right. There is this idea in pedagogy that instilling a “desirable difficulty” in the work makes it easier to remember. The concept of desirable difficulty might not be related to writing, but I think it captures the magic of Above the Ether.

It is as though Barnes took the writing advice of “show, don’t tell” to its ultimate expression. He won’t even tell us who is who and in some chapter fragments, it can be hard to tell. But that effort makes us more engaged. So much is unexplained, we must bring ourselves into the reading process. We cannot just sit back and read. We have to think while we read.

We care about these people because we have worked to know them and their situation. We understand the catastrophe because we had to integrate our own experience. Add to that, the prose that is as simple as a hymn and as musical. There is poetry on these pages as well as great understanding of humanity and compassion for the human condition.

Above the Ether is painful in many ways, especially since this dystopia seems inevitable given our desire to consume the inheritance of the next seven generations all in one. It feels grounded in the reality of likely outcomes and human potential.

Above the Ether will be released June 11th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fear of the apocalypse has been with us for thousands of years. According to the mental health professionals at verywellmind.com, “Doomsday phobias are surprisingly common.” They’re found “in some form in virtually every corner of the world.” Sometimes these delusions are rooted in religion, sometimes in technology. But the paralyzing fear the world will soon come to an end has given rise to a torrent of dystopian stories. Human actions lead to some of these nightmare scenarios. Nuclear holocaust or environmental collapse, for example. In other cases—a supervolcano eruption, killer pandemic, or meteor strike—humans have not been the cause. But, of course, all these stories end badly. What’s going on, after all, is the end of the world as we know it.

In Eric Barnes’ haunting 2019 novel, Above the Ether, the catastrophe has not yet played itself out. Surely, the world will end. But not yet.

In fact, this is how civilization will die. Not with a whimper. Not with a bang. But in a slowly gathering succession of minor tragedies, inconveniences, disappointments, and frustrations. Things will stop working the way they used to. More and more, people will lash out at others in savage ways. And, yes, it is our world, as the climate catastrophe gathers momentum. Not yet today. Maybe ten years from now. Maybe twenty or thirty.

Welcome to the apocalypse.

The world is dying

At the outset, we know that the world is dying. What we see is environmental collapse in the making. We join a father and two young children in a car racing north away from the Gulf of Mexico. A monster hurricane and an earthquake below the water’s surface have combined to send a gargantuan wall of water rushing to overtake them. But it’s even worse than that. “Nothing grows here . . . It’s been that way for years.” And, elsewhere, another character reflects, “Hot already, she can feel it, another day in the rising hundreds. . . Mudslides in the winter. Fires in the spring.” Everything that could go wrong is going wrong. The apocalypse is at hand.

Six characters experience the unfolding tragedy

Barnes reveals the story in Above the Ether in three sections. In the first, we follow the lives of three principal characters as that wall of water rushes northward. The Father. The Investor. The Stranger. Three new characters join the cast in part two. The Carousel Operator. The Doctor. The Restaurant Manager. And in part three, they all cross paths in the face of the gathering tragedy.

A universal message

Clearly, Eric Barnes wants us to understand the consequences of a climate crisis run wild. But he’s trying to make another point here as well. There is not a single proper noun in Above the Ether. No character has a name. Every one of them is identified with the definite article “the.” No brand-names appear anywhere. Does this ensure we get the message that there is no escape from the apocalypse? That the tragedy is universal? Let’s hope so. Because this is our world mere decades down the line unless we take far more aggressive action to forestall the environmental collapse that is inevitable if our carbon footprint keeps growing.

About the author

Eric Barnes (born 1968) has written four acclaimed novels and dozens of short stories to date. Above the Ether is the second of his novels on the theme of climate change. He is also the publisher of several newspapers in Tennessee.

[Zeb Kantrowitz · Rating 2 out of 5]

this is a non-formatted book that jumps from part of one story to another while there is no connection until the end of the story (if then). this is a world that has been destroyed by the deterioration of 'the city' because of the lack of jobs and the loss of production. more and more repairs public works were delayed as the roads, bridges,levees and canals began falling apart.

Barnes inflicts his people with some bizarre ecological disasters, such as when one city is swallowed up by dandelions. but after reading how many of the characters came to be on the road, they are all stuck on a highway that is below sea level. When they are caught in a heavy rain, there is a massive
pile-up on the sub-surface road, when the local levee collapses, the road becomes a river rising to sixth feet in depth.

people from the north side of the city, come to the aide of those from the south side who were stuck in the flooded highway. the story is incomprehensible at some points, or so convoluted that I can't understand why you would spend time figuring it out. Read something else.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful, lyrical, painful, savage . . . I loved this book and couldn't tear myself away from it. But it's all too real.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Eric Barnes and Arcade for a copy of Above the Ether, which I won in a Goodreads giveaway. This is a dystopian novel set in our near future. In it, our Earth is so polluted and changed through global warming that the weather has become deadly and unpredictable. Different characters, all unamed, travel across country. This novel was very bleak and dark. The end offered some glimpses of humanity and kindness, but it was so grim it was tough getting through. I was interested in many characters and I found a couple appalling. If dystopia is your genre, I think you'd like it. If, like me, you only read it infrequently, be warned it is not a warm and happy future that Eric Barnes envisions.

[Suzi McGal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very choppy, convoluted, and depressing. Did not care for the style of writing. Jumbled descriptions of a cast of characters’ travels through a deteriorating climate.

[Alicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely disjointed and chaotic. Captures the tone of a natural disaster very well - but not a pleasant reading experience.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 stars. Super quick dystopian read. Very sad as what happened could be our not so distant future. Dialogue is odd: very clipped. Oddly, No names of characters. No places mentioned other than descriptions. Stories of several different people, yet they all sounded the same. Was probably intentional? Definitely offbeat but very interesting.

[Teresa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t enjoy this book at all.
The sentences. Were to short. The book had nothing positive. The characters were bland. It was not fun to read.
The “He” and “She” and the “son” and the “daughter” and the nothingness.
Some may like it but it wasn’t a book for me.

[Jack R. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Apocalyptic and dreary

I wish this book was better, it comes close, but the overwhelming darkness of it makes it difficult to continue reading. The storyline is decent, but I feel it's taken to the gloomy extreme. I always find something in every book I read that is redeeming, and this book is no exception. The story is sound, leaning heavily on global warming as the cause of the coming apocalypse, it was easy for me to picture cause and effect. It's just the unending gloominess, I actually pondered whether to continue reading several times, but another quirk of mine is that I hate leaving a book unread. One other thing. That bothered me. Was the use of short sentences. Lots. Of short sentences.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a big fan of dystopia, but this one gripped me. I read it in two days!

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Above the Ether by Eric Barnes is a highly recommended prequel to his climate change science fiction novel The City Where We Once Lived.

The stories of six sets of vastly different characters are told in short vignettes set in the climate changed world Barnes first created in The City Where We Once Lived. The weather patterns are unpredictable and violent, while the ground is poisoned, and the government is unable to provide any assistance. This novel covers the changes before, that led to the world he created. None of his characters are given names, rather they are named by a description. We follow the stories of: a father and his two children fleeing a tsunami in the Gulf; an investor making money betting on disasters; a couple punishing themselves over their sons addictions, while wildfires rage around them; a doctor and his wife living in a refugee camp for immigrants; a young man with a violent past and present is working at a carnival; and the manager of a fast food chain in a city of fierce winds. The different characters and their stories converge on the city which is half abandoned and the setting for The City Where We Once Lived.

The writing and the stories are presented in a dream-like, fragmented manner in a harsh apocalyptic setting. This is one of those novels that you will either commit to finishing or you will set it aside. While the characters are going through turmoil and unbelievable hardships, Barnes seems to purposefully keep his characters set apart, at a distance from the readers, as if they are just another small group of diverse people suffering. The writing simply tells their story while holding the reader at a distance - until the end. It is left up to the reader to decide if they will care or not - or if they feel this reality he has created will mirror our own world. It is definitely bleak and almost hopeless, as there is a glimmer of people coming together and helping each other at the end.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Arcade Publishing.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/0...

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chilling. Most of what we read in cli-fi is post-apocalyptic. Things have already gone to hell, and there are people dealing somehow with the aftermath. Even Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science in the Capital" trilogy had a healthy distance to it. Not so in this amazing, disturbing, enthralling prequel (side-quel, really) to "The City Where We Once Lived." I think the closest to this that I've seen before, though far less personal, was "Odds Against Tomorrow" by Nathaniel Rich. There's someone similar to the main character from that novel here as well. This is the apocalyptic part before the aftermath. No-one has a name, but every character is personalized. This is the true disaster as it unfolds on the way to the less-disturbing (yes, really) dystopia that other authors prefer to skip to, because what happens between now and then is just too difficult to describe in a novel, let alone bring to your readers and hope to keep them coming back.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect prequel to the haunting "The City Where We Once Lived". Will definitely read both books again.

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
The best thing about this book, is that it shows real possibilities of what's going to happen in this country in the next 10-15 years.
The worst thing about this book, is that most people who read it will think it's exaggerated. They'll keep on eating animals, though that's one of the biggest drivers of climate change. They'll keep on consuming, getting the latest iPhone, etc., Just like the predator class wants them to.

On page 85 of the hard cover, there's a funny description of the Catholic religious service. I was brought up catholic, until my parents realized what a brainwashing they had had.
"They stand on cue, all of them, rising without being asked, nodding without being asked, crossing their fingers over their chest, again without being asked. They begin to kneel now, the room filled with a low and wooden Rumble as padded kneelers are unfolded from underneath each pew, the parishioners lowering themselves onto those padded planks. A minute later, the kneelers are tucked away again, once more discreetly positioned underneath each visitor to this church.
The people sit. They stand again. They repeat a phrase, the same phrase, an answer, a response, all of them, young and old, child and parent, they know these motions and these words by heart, it's as if they've known them since before they were ever born."

There are despicable characters in this book, but one of the admirable characters is a doctor, who escaped from somewhere in Mexico, with his wife, the daughter of an executed drug lord. They live in a refugee camp, snugged up against the border wall in the United states, one of the smallest ones with only 100,000 population.
The refugee camps are run by drug cartels. There are tunnels Dug underneath the border wall, and ending in tents in the refugee camps. Through these tunnels, human trafficking, drugs, and arms are run. Still, life is safer in these refugee camps than it is in many other places in this country.
"in the morning, he sees patients in the front room of their tent. They are lined up to see him. He has a nurse who works with him. She was a scrub nurse working on transplants at one of the University hospitals. She is much overqualified for the job. The colds people have. The pains and vague discomfort.
Most of the illnesses here are a function of the sadness people feel. The worry that they won't ever get out of this camp. The depression that this is all their journey will possibly achieve.
This is his worry too. So few visas are now issued. So many more people cross the border, most caught and sent directly to these camps. Fear of the refugees grows steadily. Anger toward them. Resentment and distrust, and for many people it is simple hatred.
His cousin made it out of his camp. Legally. He lives far west now, in a city there. He tells the doctor about the hatred. He is an architect working as a cab driver and weekend bus boy. Unable to get any other job despite the Visa and work permit he was granted many years ago. 'They don't like us,' the doctor's Cousin says when they speak by phone. 'They see us all in the same light. We've come here to take, they think. Take money. Take jobs. offer nothing. Give nothing. I tell people I designed office buildings. Hospitals. A library. A museum. They look at me and laugh.' "

Here is a description in the book, that is taken from real life in our real world of today:
"the soot and smoke of diesel oil rising from the massive ships that sail the oceans.
Flotillas of plastic bottles, drawn together, miles across, and there's no plan, no intent, no will to clean this up.
Drift nets 50 ft deep and 50 mi long, left to float with the current, ghosts now, that haunt the ocean, collecting millions of animals not intentionally, not to eat, but by accident, enTangled animals, all of them left to die."

The author's description of animal agriculture, one of the leading causes of environmental destruction, and destruction of humans and animals alike, in its breathtaking cruelty:
"pig shit, massive pools of it held in ponds carved out of the dirt, shit slowly seeping into lakes and streams and groundwater, shit-borne bacteria spreading from hog farms to spinach farm to reservoirs to city drinking water.
The rainbow-colored sheen of oily pesticides, collecting now in the drainage ditches at the end of Furrows plowed into the fields.
Cattle sometimes butchered while they still stand, staggering but alive, workers too callous or disinterested or just too numb to care that the maul no longer kills the animal they stand before. Instead, the blood of that creature, bits of live flesh and functioning organs, it all runs into drains on the concrete floor, washed down, bypassing filters long since disconnected, entering the sewers, is it alive still when it finds its way to the nearby river?"

Before I go, I have to mention the other despicable character in this book, the woman who helps her company make money off disasters in the world. she likes to have sex with children, and the author includes disgusting, triggering descriptions of it.

I have to wonder if the author is a vegan? People often lament the change in the world, as it is destroyed, and they'll buy reusable straws, ignoring one of the most important things an individual could do to make a difference.

The author's book which follows this prequel is called the city where we once lived. I have this book on my want to read list, but saw that this book is the prequel, so that's why I read it.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

*Goodreads Giveaway

I was so looking forward to receiving this book. I entered multiple giveaways trying to win a copy. When I found out I was a winner, I couldn't wait to check it out.

Unfortunately, I can't say I enjoyed it. The concept was intriguing, especially given the state of our world at this moment in time.

There are a variety of characters: a doctor & his wife living in a gang run sex trafficking area, a female CEO obsessed with having sex with younger men, guy who lost his wife and was left with 2 young children, a couple of carnival workers (one was an epileptic) and a couple who had a drug addicted son. I honestly I couldn't tell you how many other characters there were, because they didn't leave much of an impression on me and there were just too many, none of which were critical to the overall story.

The narrators abruptly switched throughout the book, in certain instances I felt that it worked for the story and in others (most of the time), it just left me scratching my head trying to figure out why everything was written in such a...scattered way.

The overall theme of the story was depressing and didn't really seem to go anywhere. You could literally skip whole chapters and not have missed anything.

I'm obsessed with dystopian novels so I was surprised when I couldn't get into this one. I thought about giving up but I powered through it.

I will say, there were pieces of the story that really did capture my attention, things that were actually thought provoking, and those things helped to get me through this book, but those pieces of the book did NOT convince me to give this novel a higher rating.

Would not recommend.

[Franchesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Follow six sets of characters as they navigate a world being overcome by the effects of climate change; with torrential rains and devastating flooding, rising temperatures and wildfires, disease and lack of resources, and much more. A number of the descriptions in this book aren't imagined future possibilities but things that have already begun, with the many trees in my area permanently bent like arches due to the almost constant 40 mph wind and stronger being just one of them. There are no names in this book, and our six main characters are referred to by occupation, and towns and cities are described, or mentioned passively without giving names. I found it to be an interesting way to tell the story and an interesting read overall. A warning, and if we just open our eyes we will see it happening all around us as our faces are buried in our phones and other devices (and vices). I finished this book in two days time, I started it as rain and sleet pelted my roof, wetting the snow that had accumulated overnight and making it heavy on rooftops, continuing for hours and hours, and finished it on this blustery day that is blowing away anything not nailed down, bending the trees, and making my home shake and sway. I know there has always been bad weather, but it is getting more and more extreme every day, forcing people stay inside due to these extreme weather conditions that are clearly worsening quickly. This is less dystopian fiction than it is nearer than we realize future reality. An exciting read with lots of action and a very interesting and believable plot and characters.

This review is of a (signed hardcover 🙂) book I won in a Goodreads giveaway.

[SueBee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m always up for a dystopian/post-apocalyptic novel, so I was excited to find this one, which is set in an unnamed place when climate change has done what we expect it will. Unfortunately something about this book didn’t quite work for me.

I’ve read other books with a similar structure where each chapter follows a different character’s experience of the same time and place. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what I didn’t like with this one, but sentence structure definitely played a role. I found the short, abrupt sentences a bit irritating (which probably says more about me than the author). And the vignettes…so, so many vignettes. After a while I just started skipping over them because when I did read them, they seemed to add nothing. Maybe it was a stylistic choice to create ambience or something. I don’t know. I just know I didn’t get it.

So now that I’ve more or less crapped all over the author’s style, I feel a bit bad so I will say that the book started out okay with a “running from a tsunami” storyline. I mean, who doesn’t love that? Am I right? Also, I didn’t find the staccato sentences and vignettes irritating in the first few chapters so maybe there were fewer of them there, or maybe it just took a while for that to get old for me. I do think many (most?) people wouldn’t notice or care, so I’m sure there is an adoring audience for this book somewhere. I’m just not part of it.

[Simon Langley-Evans · Rating 1 out of 5]

Above the Ether is a dystopian novel set in the very near future. The climate is in collapse and as some parts of the world become uninhabitable due to the baking sun and uncontrollable fires, others are subject to flooding. Interference with nature has created a plague of herbicide resistant dandelions and for many people life is a hideous struggle. The novel follows the journeys of a series of individuals- the father and his children fleeing a tsunami which has struck the US Gulf coast; the futures investor making a fortune from global disaster and a range of others experiencing the challenges of the collapsing world.
Now, I usually like a bit of dystopia, but this was hard work to read. None of the characters in the book have names and none of them have any interaction with each other until the very end. Everything about the story is dismal and depressing and the prose is jarring and discordant. None of the events follow any clear time line and the observations of the lives of the protagonists jump about in a jarring manner. It felt as though the author had compiled a series of scenes and then just banged them together in a semi-random order. There was nothing I enjoyed about this book and I feel no inclination to read The City Where We Once Lived, which is what follows on from Above the Ether. It was expensive too- two or three times more than I usually pay for a book- so I am feeling sore about this one. I really hated it

[Nathan Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Above the Ether by Eric Barnes is a powerful and also strange story about humans or people living in a world that’s falling apart. The storms, Fires, and also floods in the book keep destroying the land, and also the people in the book or in the story have to figure out how to survive. Although it is pretty sad and scary, the book shows hope in small moments of kindness.

I pretty much honestly really liked how the author made the setting feel pretty real, like an example when he described the rivers turning toxic and the smoke choking the sky. It made me imagine being inside the book and also made me wonder what I would do. The characters felt strong too like the couple trying to start over even though they kept losing everything they had. I honestly thought it was pretty cool that the book did not just focus on one single person but it hopped to different people’s lives, which on the other hand kept it pretty interesting for me and also kept me hooked to the story. But at the same time this made it a little confusing because sometimes I forgot which person was which and who was who. Also the story doesn’t give you a happy ending, which I pretty much did not like, but on the other hand it made sense with the book’s message about survival. I recommend this book for the readers who like the dystopian stories, but I would also warn younger readers that it’s pretty sad and it also gets dark. In total it is a pretty powerful book that makes the reader think about how people treat the world and each other.

[Bobbi Madderra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wish I could have gotten into this book more. In fact, I could not finish it and had to put it down about halfway through.
I don't think my lack of liking this book is so much a reflection of the author, as much as my preferred reading styles. So please take this review with a grain of salt and try it for yourselves.
I often read books that follow different characters points of views and situations from chapter to chapter, but this one was hard to stay focused on.
I'm not sure if it's the lack of connection I have to the characters (although, the father and his children's story is very interesting, and feels as if given more time would come to a nice climax) that made it so hard, but I couldn't submerge myself in the stories like I do with many books I read.
I don't want to feel myself, outside the pages, as my eyes scroll over the letters and comprehend the words, but cannot create that magic of my personal movie playing behind my eyes as I read along. For me, without that connection, I can't read the book and fully give it my all. Sometimes if I re-visit a book much later, sometimes years, I can get into it. I'll revisit this read later and hope to give an updated, better rating review.

[Rodrigo Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Above the Ether is a novel about a dystopian world after climate change takes over the world. It follows the story of many characters and is slightly confusing because of the constant changes between characters. It shows many of the issues that this dystopian world brings to the characters. Overall, my opinion on the book is that it's alright. The characters don't have names which to me makes it seem very dull. The book can be very confusing sometimes because it switches constantly from character to character and I kept getting lost a lot of the time. The sexual references also made me very uncomfortable and I had thought they would be minimal but they kept happening and it just made it hard to read. One good thought on the book though is that I like how they made the despair of the whole situation so real. One scene in the book where the dad's kids are screaming at him for help and the book does a good job at describing the despair the dad felt and how hopeless he felt. Overall, the book has prominent flaws, but it also does some good things as well. I would probably not recommend this book to people, especially because of the many sexual references.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not technically post apocalyptic, but it still feels that way. We get stories from 6 unnamed, unconnected people, juxtaposed with snippets of descriptions of phenomenon- some already happening and some easily envisioned. It all works to effectively create a hauntingly realistic vision of the near future- maybe 20 years coming.

It's not only the climate change that is horrifying- although the looming, ever-present extreme weather in different cities in the book do have that effect. The horror also comes from how the people in the book relate (or don't relate, as the case may be) to each other. The investor is particularly hard to read because she's such a dispassionately terrible person. There's no real interpersonal animosity in the book- most of the conflict is with nature, but there's also not much empathy towards the very end of the book, which just makes it seem so bleak. I didn't realize this was a prequel until I'd gotten part way through the book, and I'm definitely interested in continuing.

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An earthquake and a hurricane hit the Gulf together causing a devastating tsunami in the Southeastern United States, wildfires are causing devastation in the west and fierce storms are hitting other parts of the United States; drug addictions are destroying people and families. From different parts of the country, six sets of people fleeing destructive forces and natures converge on a city that is already broken. It’s a chilling story of a future built on today’s environmental and societal problems. There is love, loss and ends with the remarkable human nature of people surviving and coming together with a glimmer of hope for the future. This book is a prequel to The City Where We Once Lived and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens to the characters. I was lucky in receiving a free copy of Above The Ether from Goodreads