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Buccmaster Trilogy #3
Alexandria
'Like Robert Macfarlane re-written by Cormac McCarthy.' Telegraph
'Beckett doing Beowulf.' London Review of Books
One thousand years from now, the sole inhabitants of a small island - a group no larger than an extended family - are living in a post-civilised world. They are perhaps the Earth's only human survivors.
But lurking outside their isolated community is a figure in red, an emissary from another way of life: a virtual place of refuge and security, of escape from the dangers of a newly wild world. The visitor calls it Alexandria.
A work of radical and matchless imagination, Paul Kingsnorth's new novel is a mythical, polyphonic drama driven by elemental themes: of community versus the self, the mind versus the body, machine over man; whether to put your faith in the present or the future.
Set on the far side of the climate apocalypse, Alexandria completes the Buccmaster Trilogy, which began with Kingsnorth's prize-winning The Wake.
'Beckett doing Beowulf.' London Review of Books
One thousand years from now, the sole inhabitants of a small island - a group no larger than an extended family - are living in a post-civilised world. They are perhaps the Earth's only human survivors.
But lurking outside their isolated community is a figure in red, an emissary from another way of life: a virtual place of refuge and security, of escape from the dangers of a newly wild world. The visitor calls it Alexandria.
A work of radical and matchless imagination, Paul Kingsnorth's new novel is a mythical, polyphonic drama driven by elemental themes: of community versus the self, the mind versus the body, machine over man; whether to put your faith in the present or the future.
Set on the far side of the climate apocalypse, Alexandria completes the Buccmaster Trilogy, which began with Kingsnorth's prize-winning The Wake.
364 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 6, 2020
54 people are currently reading
1337 people want to read
About the author
Paul Kingsnorth
40 books580 followersPaul Kingsnorth is an English writer and thinker. He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. He lives in the west of Ireland.
He studied modern history at Oxford University, where he was also heavily involved in the road protest movement of the early 1990s.
After graduating, Paul spent two months in Indonesia working on conservation projects in Borneo and Java. Back in the UK, he worked for a year on the staff of the Independent newspaper. Following a three year stint as a campaign writer for an environmental NGO, he was appointed deputy editor of The Ecologist, where he worked for two years under the editorship of Zac Goldsmith.
He left the Ecologist in 2001 to write his first book One No, Many Yeses, a political travelogue which explored the growing anti-capitalist movement around the world. The book was published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster, in six languages across 13 countries.
In the early 2000s, having spent time with the tribal people of West Papua, who continue to be brutally colonised by the Indonesian government and military, Paul was instrumental in setting up the Free West Papua Campaign, which he also helped to run for a time.
Paul’s second book, Real England, was published in 2008 by Portobello. An exploration of the changing face of his home country in an age of globalisation, the book was quoted in speeches by the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, helped inspire the success of the hit West End play ‘Jerusalem’ and saw its author compared to Cobbett and Orwell by more than one newspaper.
In 2009, Paul launched, with Dougald Hine, the Dark Mountain Project – a call for a literary movement to respond to the ongoing collapse of the world’s ecological and economic certainties. What began as a self-published pamphlet has become a global network of writers, artists and thinkers. Paul is now the Project’s director and one of its editors.
In 2011, Paul’s first collection of poetry, Kidland, was published by Salmon. Since the mid-1990s, Paul’s poetry has been published in magazines including Envoi, Iota, Poetry Life and nthposition. He has been awarded the BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year Award and the Poetry Life Prize, and was narrowly pipped to the post in the Thomas Hardy Society’s annual competition.
Paul’s journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Le Monde, New Statesman, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Big Issue, Adbusters, BBC Wildlife and openDemocracy, for which he has also worked as a commissioning editor. He has appeared on various TV and radio programmes, most shamefully ‘This Morning with Richard and Judy.’ He is also the author of ‘Your Countryside, Your Choice’, a report on the future of the countryside, published in 2005 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
He studied modern history at Oxford University, where he was also heavily involved in the road protest movement of the early 1990s.
After graduating, Paul spent two months in Indonesia working on conservation projects in Borneo and Java. Back in the UK, he worked for a year on the staff of the Independent newspaper. Following a three year stint as a campaign writer for an environmental NGO, he was appointed deputy editor of The Ecologist, where he worked for two years under the editorship of Zac Goldsmith.
He left the Ecologist in 2001 to write his first book One No, Many Yeses, a political travelogue which explored the growing anti-capitalist movement around the world. The book was published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster, in six languages across 13 countries.
In the early 2000s, having spent time with the tribal people of West Papua, who continue to be brutally colonised by the Indonesian government and military, Paul was instrumental in setting up the Free West Papua Campaign, which he also helped to run for a time.
Paul’s second book, Real England, was published in 2008 by Portobello. An exploration of the changing face of his home country in an age of globalisation, the book was quoted in speeches by the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, helped inspire the success of the hit West End play ‘Jerusalem’ and saw its author compared to Cobbett and Orwell by more than one newspaper.
In 2009, Paul launched, with Dougald Hine, the Dark Mountain Project – a call for a literary movement to respond to the ongoing collapse of the world’s ecological and economic certainties. What began as a self-published pamphlet has become a global network of writers, artists and thinkers. Paul is now the Project’s director and one of its editors.
In 2011, Paul’s first collection of poetry, Kidland, was published by Salmon. Since the mid-1990s, Paul’s poetry has been published in magazines including Envoi, Iota, Poetry Life and nthposition. He has been awarded the BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year Award and the Poetry Life Prize, and was narrowly pipped to the post in the Thomas Hardy Society’s annual competition.
Paul’s journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Le Monde, New Statesman, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Big Issue, Adbusters, BBC Wildlife and openDemocracy, for which he has also worked as a commissioning editor. He has appeared on various TV and radio programmes, most shamefully ‘This Morning with Richard and Judy.’ He is also the author of ‘Your Countryside, Your Choice’, a report on the future of the countryside, published in 2005 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
July 10, 2021
This is the third and concluding volume of a two millennia spanning trilogy, which started with ”The Wake” (Booker longlisted, Goldsmith shortlisted, Gordon Burn Prize winner) in 2014 and “Beast” in 2016.
“The Wake” I found an outstanding novel. Set in 1066-1068 (ie around 1000 years ago) it featured Buccmaster, Lincolnshire landowner, and is effectively a tale of resistance to Norman invasion by someone though who was already set apart from his fellow fen dwellers by his following of the old gods and particularly his belief that he has been chosen and marked out by the legendary blacksmith Weland. Kingsnorth wrote at the time about the historical Anglo-Saxon legend of Wayland that he was from a “liminal territory, where magic meets metalwork ……….. a goldsmith with magical powers, he is enslaved by a greed-addled king, upon whom he wreaks a terrible, bloodthirsty revenge. …. His fires transform base metal into gold, the mundane into the magical, injustice into bloody revenge. Wayland is not just a smith. He is an alchemist.”
The Wake is written in a “shadow tongue” – a version of Olde English updated to be readable but respecting many of the rules of that language
“The Beast” I found a less convincing novel – set in our present time about a hermit Edward Buckmaster, obsessed with a with a beast (a large black cat) which he spots occasionally and decides to track. Language is important here – but rather than a language invention of Kingsnorth it seems that the ungrammatical, fractured English reflects more the increasing disassociation of Buckmaster from modern life and the increasing blurring of reality and dreams, consciousness and unconsciousness. It did have some common themes – particularly the rejection of a changed world, dreams and omens, a strong sense of the importance of the soul of the natural world, perhaps controversially the self-delusion/self-centredness of the main character.
This the third novel – is set 1000 years in the future, and I feels much more of a return to “The Wake”
The book is (like that one) set in the Fens.
Wayland returns as a fundamental influence.
The book also features a group looking to fundamentally remake the world and one looking to return it to an older way of life..
It also features – at least at first - a different language. This is I think easier to follow than in “The Wake” and one that is perhaps more of a stripped down form of English with simplified spelling, reduced vocabulary and with (by our standards) tenses shifting fluidly, although interestingly with a heavy Anglo-Saxon influence (to a 21st Century reader it is the Anglo Saxon terms – particularly Wight for animal and Holt for wood – which initially jar. The language I think reflects the pared back nature of the lifestyle of the group with which the book starts, their reaching way back past the 21st Century for a lifestyle to emulate and their very different sense of time and space (with a quite respect for the circularity of nature replacing a fervent belief in the arrow of progress).
The author himself has said “The first book, The Wake, explores cultural identity and roots. In that book, the central character’s stubborn refusal to surrender his very particular notion of what it means to be English in the face of unstoppable change leads to tragedy for everyone around him. Beast, the second novel, shifts from culture to the individual. What does it mean to be an individual mind in the world, what is the mind, can it be broken open and what lies outside it? Reality in that book is far from fixed. If The Wake is about the culture, and Beast is about the mind, Alexandria is about the body. The central conflict in this novel is between those who live determinedly within their given, natural forms, and those who seek to escape them through becoming “as Gods” and remaking reality to suit human desires. The struggle is between accepting limits and denying them in pursuit of our own divinity”.
The start of the book, set in a post climate changed warmed Fens (where yams are gown) features a Fen dwelling community – the Order (later we find known as the Nitrian order).
The Order believes in a kind of part animist, part Christian worldview – with a great Mother, with birds acting as messengers, confidants, advisors and dream gods (and with a symbolic series of poles each carved with the bird whose visit represents the year) - and live in a wooded cloister in a sustainable relationship with nature – one which acknowledges the needs of their bodies (they are for example far from vegetarians) but also respects those of the animals, trees and plants around them.
Once their own number was much larger and they were part of a wider series of such communities – now their numbers have dwindled and they think they may be alone. The others seem to have been tempted away to join a mythical city called Alexandria and ruled over by Wayland – a City where it seems people are freed from the confines of their mortal bodies and given some form of disembodied mind immortality. Wayland even their own legends seem to say was some form of Artificial Intelligence developed by an increasingly rapacious mankind (for whom nature was no longer sufficient) who then, in their view, enslaved man and whose offer of transhumanism is one which should be resisted as effectively genocide on the human race.
The community now is only the two designated elders “Father” and “Mother”, Sfia, her husband Nzil and precocious daughter El, Yyrvidian – the communities dreamer – and Lorenso (Sfia’s lover but also an agitator for the community to seek out Alexandria).
While the community is prowled by a red stalker (an emissary of Wayland they believe come to tempt them away) – Yyrvidian has a dream of a swans (which points to the possible fulfillment of a 1000-year old prophecy of the downfall of Alexandria). Father and an increasingly dissatisfied Lorenso set off West to see what has happened.
However both the two seekers and the even smaller community left behind are then more directly approached by the red stalker – who reveals himself in whatever form is necessary to each member to overcome their initial hostility and to allow him to reveal his true self (he is we find an intelligence called K put into an embodied form in the service of Wayland until he can harvest sufficient recruits for Alexandria) and to set out the real vision of Alexandria – the freeing of humanity from the confines of its bodily weaknesses and freeing the Earth from the consequences of mankind’s destructive bodily appetities.
So we have the situation where both The Order and Alexandria agree on the problem – but not on the solution.
I enjoyed some of the ways in which the two sides are contrasted:
- In their language – I have already discussed the language of the Order, but K’s reports on his encounters with the Order are set out in what is very much 21st Century English – Kingsnorth I think indicating what side he thinks is currently dominating discourse in our present day
- In their names. Alexandria is of course based on its Great Library – a collection of human minds rather than human written knowledge. And the Order is I assume named after the Christian monastic community in the Nitrian desert close to Alexandria
The author himself has I think come on quite a journey and I find it interesting that he has recently rediscovered Christianity and been baptised into the Orthodox church.
“Religions impose limits: on our desires, our passions, our will. They require us to live within boundaries, to obey God, and the best of them require us too to respect nature — Creation — and our bodies, and the shape and form they impose upon us. Religions require self-control, limits on our appetites, respect for those shapes and forms rather than a desire to break them open. Take away the notion that God wants us to live within given limits, and to exhibit self-control for the greater good, and you get the kind of free-for-all we have now in which every limit we see in any area of life is a form of oppression to be attacked and destroyed.”
Overall I thought this was a strong continuation to “The Wake” and while I still have not fully processed the full role of “The Beast” (other than in the continuum of time) this remains a groundbreaking and thought provoking trilogy.
“The Wake” I found an outstanding novel. Set in 1066-1068 (ie around 1000 years ago) it featured Buccmaster, Lincolnshire landowner, and is effectively a tale of resistance to Norman invasion by someone though who was already set apart from his fellow fen dwellers by his following of the old gods and particularly his belief that he has been chosen and marked out by the legendary blacksmith Weland. Kingsnorth wrote at the time about the historical Anglo-Saxon legend of Wayland that he was from a “liminal territory, where magic meets metalwork ……….. a goldsmith with magical powers, he is enslaved by a greed-addled king, upon whom he wreaks a terrible, bloodthirsty revenge. …. His fires transform base metal into gold, the mundane into the magical, injustice into bloody revenge. Wayland is not just a smith. He is an alchemist.”
The Wake is written in a “shadow tongue” – a version of Olde English updated to be readable but respecting many of the rules of that language
“The Beast” I found a less convincing novel – set in our present time about a hermit Edward Buckmaster, obsessed with a with a beast (a large black cat) which he spots occasionally and decides to track. Language is important here – but rather than a language invention of Kingsnorth it seems that the ungrammatical, fractured English reflects more the increasing disassociation of Buckmaster from modern life and the increasing blurring of reality and dreams, consciousness and unconsciousness. It did have some common themes – particularly the rejection of a changed world, dreams and omens, a strong sense of the importance of the soul of the natural world, perhaps controversially the self-delusion/self-centredness of the main character.
This the third novel – is set 1000 years in the future, and I feels much more of a return to “The Wake”
The book is (like that one) set in the Fens.
Wayland returns as a fundamental influence.
The book also features a group looking to fundamentally remake the world and one looking to return it to an older way of life..
It also features – at least at first - a different language. This is I think easier to follow than in “The Wake” and one that is perhaps more of a stripped down form of English with simplified spelling, reduced vocabulary and with (by our standards) tenses shifting fluidly, although interestingly with a heavy Anglo-Saxon influence (to a 21st Century reader it is the Anglo Saxon terms – particularly Wight for animal and Holt for wood – which initially jar. The language I think reflects the pared back nature of the lifestyle of the group with which the book starts, their reaching way back past the 21st Century for a lifestyle to emulate and their very different sense of time and space (with a quite respect for the circularity of nature replacing a fervent belief in the arrow of progress).
The author himself has said “The first book, The Wake, explores cultural identity and roots. In that book, the central character’s stubborn refusal to surrender his very particular notion of what it means to be English in the face of unstoppable change leads to tragedy for everyone around him. Beast, the second novel, shifts from culture to the individual. What does it mean to be an individual mind in the world, what is the mind, can it be broken open and what lies outside it? Reality in that book is far from fixed. If The Wake is about the culture, and Beast is about the mind, Alexandria is about the body. The central conflict in this novel is between those who live determinedly within their given, natural forms, and those who seek to escape them through becoming “as Gods” and remaking reality to suit human desires. The struggle is between accepting limits and denying them in pursuit of our own divinity”.
The start of the book, set in a post climate changed warmed Fens (where yams are gown) features a Fen dwelling community – the Order (later we find known as the Nitrian order).
The Order believes in a kind of part animist, part Christian worldview – with a great Mother, with birds acting as messengers, confidants, advisors and dream gods (and with a symbolic series of poles each carved with the bird whose visit represents the year) - and live in a wooded cloister in a sustainable relationship with nature – one which acknowledges the needs of their bodies (they are for example far from vegetarians) but also respects those of the animals, trees and plants around them.
Once their own number was much larger and they were part of a wider series of such communities – now their numbers have dwindled and they think they may be alone. The others seem to have been tempted away to join a mythical city called Alexandria and ruled over by Wayland – a City where it seems people are freed from the confines of their mortal bodies and given some form of disembodied mind immortality. Wayland even their own legends seem to say was some form of Artificial Intelligence developed by an increasingly rapacious mankind (for whom nature was no longer sufficient) who then, in their view, enslaved man and whose offer of transhumanism is one which should be resisted as effectively genocide on the human race.
The community now is only the two designated elders “Father” and “Mother”, Sfia, her husband Nzil and precocious daughter El, Yyrvidian – the communities dreamer – and Lorenso (Sfia’s lover but also an agitator for the community to seek out Alexandria).
While the community is prowled by a red stalker (an emissary of Wayland they believe come to tempt them away) – Yyrvidian has a dream of a swans (which points to the possible fulfillment of a 1000-year old prophecy of the downfall of Alexandria). Father and an increasingly dissatisfied Lorenso set off West to see what has happened.
However both the two seekers and the even smaller community left behind are then more directly approached by the red stalker – who reveals himself in whatever form is necessary to each member to overcome their initial hostility and to allow him to reveal his true self (he is we find an intelligence called K put into an embodied form in the service of Wayland until he can harvest sufficient recruits for Alexandria) and to set out the real vision of Alexandria – the freeing of humanity from the confines of its bodily weaknesses and freeing the Earth from the consequences of mankind’s destructive bodily appetities.
So we have the situation where both The Order and Alexandria agree on the problem – but not on the solution.
I enjoyed some of the ways in which the two sides are contrasted:
- In their language – I have already discussed the language of the Order, but K’s reports on his encounters with the Order are set out in what is very much 21st Century English – Kingsnorth I think indicating what side he thinks is currently dominating discourse in our present day
- In their names. Alexandria is of course based on its Great Library – a collection of human minds rather than human written knowledge. And the Order is I assume named after the Christian monastic community in the Nitrian desert close to Alexandria
The author himself has I think come on quite a journey and I find it interesting that he has recently rediscovered Christianity and been baptised into the Orthodox church.
“Religions impose limits: on our desires, our passions, our will. They require us to live within boundaries, to obey God, and the best of them require us too to respect nature — Creation — and our bodies, and the shape and form they impose upon us. Religions require self-control, limits on our appetites, respect for those shapes and forms rather than a desire to break them open. Take away the notion that God wants us to live within given limits, and to exhibit self-control for the greater good, and you get the kind of free-for-all we have now in which every limit we see in any area of life is a form of oppression to be attacked and destroyed.”
Overall I thought this was a strong continuation to “The Wake” and while I still have not fully processed the full role of “The Beast” (other than in the continuum of time) this remains a groundbreaking and thought provoking trilogy.
February 26, 2021
For years I have tramped around your little settlements, listening to your drivel about birds and dreams and the lady and the rest of it.
I loved Paul Kingsnorth's innovative The Wake, which was included on the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize shortlist, with its innovative use of language, replicating Old English through a pseudo phonetic approximation , but, like many other readers, was bemused by the follow up Beast, with rather plain prose but a hard-to-follow narrator.
Alexandria completes the trilogy. The form returns to the use of non-standard language of The Wake, but here it felt silly and a distraction. And I have to say I've become increasingly disturbed at the author's social and political views that rather underlie the trilogy. In my review of Beast I commented that "In The Wake this manifesto was present but not front and centre, but in Beast is forms the very essence of the novel and the book suffers a little as a result. To Kingsnorth's credit, and as in The Wake, he doesn't make his narrators particularly sympathy-rousing mouthpieces, indeed the delusions of both buccmaster and Buckmaster are such as actually to force the reader to question their views, a brave authorial decision and one which lifts this from mere polemic to literature." In Alexandria, the exposition-heavy sections from K in standard English are pure polemic.
This Guardian review expresses both aspects rather well: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC, but not a book I can recommend.
I loved Paul Kingsnorth's innovative The Wake, which was included on the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize shortlist, with its innovative use of language, replicating Old English through a pseudo phonetic approximation , but, like many other readers, was bemused by the follow up Beast, with rather plain prose but a hard-to-follow narrator.
Alexandria completes the trilogy. The form returns to the use of non-standard language of The Wake, but here it felt silly and a distraction. And I have to say I've become increasingly disturbed at the author's social and political views that rather underlie the trilogy. In my review of Beast I commented that "In The Wake this manifesto was present but not front and centre, but in Beast is forms the very essence of the novel and the book suffers a little as a result. To Kingsnorth's credit, and as in The Wake, he doesn't make his narrators particularly sympathy-rousing mouthpieces, indeed the delusions of both buccmaster and Buckmaster are such as actually to force the reader to question their views, a brave authorial decision and one which lifts this from mere polemic to literature." In Alexandria, the exposition-heavy sections from K in standard English are pure polemic.
This Guardian review expresses both aspects rather well: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC, but not a book I can recommend.
March 2, 2021
In preparation for reading Alexandria, I decided to re-read the first two parts of the trilogy (The Wake and Beast). This is not necessary and you can read Alexandria without reading either of the two other books. In an interview with The American Conservative, Kingsnorth says ”Alexandria is the last book in the series. It’s set a thousand years from now, in the same place as The Wake. There are a lot of echoes, but it’s also a book that stands alone. It can be read without even knowing the other two exist; but if you have read them, there will be an added layer of richness to it. The common theme of all the books is the relationship between people and the land — and the notion that the land is a lot more sentient and aware than we might give it credit for.”
That final sentence gives you a clue about where Kingsnorth is heading. Also, the fact that this enthusisatic interview/review is in The American Conservative gives you more clues about what is going on. To Google Paul Kingsnorth is to disappear into a labyrinth of dark ecology, the Dark Mountain Project, the Uncivilisation manifesto and much more.
The Wake and Beast were, largely, stories but with reflections of some of Kingsnorth’s views. Alexandria, it feels to me, is far more expositional about those views and the story just tags along for the ride. To be fair to the author, he has characters exploring several different, even opposing, points of view, but large portions of the book are pure exposition and become rather wearing.
The Wake was set 1000 years in our past. Beast was set in our present. Alexandria continues the progression and is set 1000 years in our future. Alexandria starts out in the same physical location as The Wake although things have changed in the intervening 2000 years, largely driven by the novel’s key theme: the activities of human beings (e.g. sea levels have risen dramatically). In the Fens of East Anglia, we meet a small community living off the land (what is left of it after the rising sea has flooded most of it). They are part of the Order and serve the Lady. There are hardly any of them left. The reason for their dwindling numbers is clear to their leader (“mother”): there is a kind of stalker out there who is dangerous. These stalkers are servants of Wayland (back to Wake territory) and they imprison people’s souls in Alexandria.
This setup gives us protagonists on two sides of an argument. There are the leaders of the small community and there are the stalkers. Eventually the two sides engage in a dialogue where they explain their points of view. This is where the book starts to fall down for me. The stalkers very much reminded me of Agent Smith from The Matrix (and we do, in fact, get a comparison of the human race to a pathogen/virus at one point, which is perhaps Agent Smith’s most famous quote). There’s an awful lot of exposition. Far too much exposition for me to enjoy the book.
The key question being explored is whether human beings should live within the natural limitations they have (our bodies) or should attempt to progress (if that is what you call it) beyond that. As we learn the truth about Wayland the whole idea of artificial intelligence comes into play.
Language has always been important in this trilogy. The Wake was written entirely in a “shadow tongue” designed to give the feel of old English in a way that was comprehensible for today’s English speakers. It worked really well. Beast was, for large parts, fractured in its language and that met with mixed reactions. I enjoyed it more on a second reading than I did on the first. Alexandria again invents a kind of language, this time a sort of cut down, minimal English. For me, this was the least effective of the linguistic experiments in the three books.
If I am honest, I felt like giving up on this book at several points. I reached these points mainly during one of the interminable info dumps. The story floating around in the background is OK if all rather predictable, but the prolonged preachy bits really put me off.
That final sentence gives you a clue about where Kingsnorth is heading. Also, the fact that this enthusisatic interview/review is in The American Conservative gives you more clues about what is going on. To Google Paul Kingsnorth is to disappear into a labyrinth of dark ecology, the Dark Mountain Project, the Uncivilisation manifesto and much more.
The Wake and Beast were, largely, stories but with reflections of some of Kingsnorth’s views. Alexandria, it feels to me, is far more expositional about those views and the story just tags along for the ride. To be fair to the author, he has characters exploring several different, even opposing, points of view, but large portions of the book are pure exposition and become rather wearing.
The Wake was set 1000 years in our past. Beast was set in our present. Alexandria continues the progression and is set 1000 years in our future. Alexandria starts out in the same physical location as The Wake although things have changed in the intervening 2000 years, largely driven by the novel’s key theme: the activities of human beings (e.g. sea levels have risen dramatically). In the Fens of East Anglia, we meet a small community living off the land (what is left of it after the rising sea has flooded most of it). They are part of the Order and serve the Lady. There are hardly any of them left. The reason for their dwindling numbers is clear to their leader (“mother”): there is a kind of stalker out there who is dangerous. These stalkers are servants of Wayland (back to Wake territory) and they imprison people’s souls in Alexandria.
This setup gives us protagonists on two sides of an argument. There are the leaders of the small community and there are the stalkers. Eventually the two sides engage in a dialogue where they explain their points of view. This is where the book starts to fall down for me. The stalkers very much reminded me of Agent Smith from The Matrix (and we do, in fact, get a comparison of the human race to a pathogen/virus at one point, which is perhaps Agent Smith’s most famous quote). There’s an awful lot of exposition. Far too much exposition for me to enjoy the book.
The key question being explored is whether human beings should live within the natural limitations they have (our bodies) or should attempt to progress (if that is what you call it) beyond that. As we learn the truth about Wayland the whole idea of artificial intelligence comes into play.
Language has always been important in this trilogy. The Wake was written entirely in a “shadow tongue” designed to give the feel of old English in a way that was comprehensible for today’s English speakers. It worked really well. Beast was, for large parts, fractured in its language and that met with mixed reactions. I enjoyed it more on a second reading than I did on the first. Alexandria again invents a kind of language, this time a sort of cut down, minimal English. For me, this was the least effective of the linguistic experiments in the three books.
If I am honest, I felt like giving up on this book at several points. I reached these points mainly during one of the interminable info dumps. The story floating around in the background is OK if all rather predictable, but the prolonged preachy bits really put me off.
February 16, 2021
Well, I thought this was absolutely STUNNING. I could NOT put it down and stayed up late to finish it, which I rarely ever do.
I will be honest: I read the first 5-10% of the book with some trepidation. God, I thought, this is hitting a LOT of familiar post apocalyptic notes. Riddley Walker, Cloud Atlas, The fucking Road. The retelling of the ancient apocalyptic collapse as myth. Men and women in typical gendered roles. I began to sweat a bit, grow nervous.
And then the book went in a direction I was NOT expecting. Idiot that I am, I totally should have seen it coming! But I did not.
This is the point to stop reading in order to avoid spoilers, and I will be inserting a spoiler cut accordingly. And so...this book got its hook in me and did NOT let go!
I really loved the main theme in this, that of the body versus the mind - the mud between the toes versus the heavenly ideal. I thought it was so beautiful and so powerful, and such an elegant solution to the suffering espoused by Ottessa Moshfegh's characters (who are trapped, trapped, trapped). I was also reminded of Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, especially via the character of Lorenso. I thought the book did a BEAUTIFUL and really fair and balanced job of showing the difficulty of being a young man (in an Iron John-Jung kind of way). I'm also pretty sure I spotted some cameos from the titular "Beast," the second book in the trilogy. Believe it or not, I have yet to read "The Wake"!! (I definitely will now, though.)
This book tackles some BIG, BIG themes. Are humans essentially evil? Is the earth better off without them? Is religion evil? What about primitivism? Is desire evil? Is a Buddha-like merging of the universe and all consciousness ideal? Or is a fucking horrifying nightmare? What is preferable, understanding or ignorance? What's better, freedom or containment?
I'm not entirely convinced by the book's solution/final twist, assuming I understood it correctly. I definitely have... questions. SPOILERS, DON'T READ.
Overall, this was one of the best books I've read in years. Thoughtful, provocative, and challenging, which is everything I want from fiction.
(One important thing to know is that 'Holt' is the Anglo-Saxon word for 'woodland,' and NOT a reference to Holt the city, which is what I assumed it was for the first quarter of the book like a fucking idiot until I got on Wikipedia.)
Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.
I will be honest: I read the first 5-10% of the book with some trepidation. God, I thought, this is hitting a LOT of familiar post apocalyptic notes. Riddley Walker, Cloud Atlas, The fucking Road. The retelling of the ancient apocalyptic collapse as myth. Men and women in typical gendered roles. I began to sweat a bit, grow nervous.
And then the book went in a direction I was NOT expecting. Idiot that I am, I totally should have seen it coming! But I did not.
This is the point to stop reading in order to avoid spoilers, and I will be inserting a spoiler cut accordingly. And so...this book got its hook in me and did NOT let go!
I really loved the main theme in this, that of the body versus the mind - the mud between the toes versus the heavenly ideal. I thought it was so beautiful and so powerful, and such an elegant solution to the suffering espoused by Ottessa Moshfegh's characters (who are trapped, trapped, trapped). I was also reminded of Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, especially via the character of Lorenso. I thought the book did a BEAUTIFUL and really fair and balanced job of showing the difficulty of being a young man (in an Iron John-Jung kind of way). I'm also pretty sure I spotted some cameos from the titular "Beast," the second book in the trilogy. Believe it or not, I have yet to read "The Wake"!! (I definitely will now, though.)
This book tackles some BIG, BIG themes. Are humans essentially evil? Is the earth better off without them? Is religion evil? What about primitivism? Is desire evil? Is a Buddha-like merging of the universe and all consciousness ideal? Or is a fucking horrifying nightmare? What is preferable, understanding or ignorance? What's better, freedom or containment?
I'm not entirely convinced by the book's solution/final twist, assuming I understood it correctly. I definitely have... questions. SPOILERS, DON'T READ.
Overall, this was one of the best books I've read in years. Thoughtful, provocative, and challenging, which is everything I want from fiction.
(One important thing to know is that 'Holt' is the Anglo-Saxon word for 'woodland,' and NOT a reference to Holt the city, which is what I assumed it was for the first quarter of the book like a fucking idiot until I got on Wikipedia.)
Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.
March 21, 2021
Paul Kingsnorth completes this trilogy of humans' relationship to our planet with a story set 1000 years hence. Alexandria represents technology and the severance of mind from body. This contrasts with a dwindling tribe who live with a close relationship with nature.
There's a dialogue here about mind vs body and I can see what some GR reviewers regard as an overly polemical tone but I think this is an important topic, our relationship with our environment and how it should be respected, that there should be some balance.
There's a dialogue here about mind vs body and I can see what some GR reviewers regard as an overly polemical tone but I think this is an important topic, our relationship with our environment and how it should be respected, that there should be some balance.
June 5, 2022
Alexandria concludes the trilogy that Paul Kingsnorth began with The Wake. Of the three novels, I found The Wake the strongest. I also think they are so different as to not really form a coherent trilogy. Each seems to be doing something quite different thematically, although to be fair the themes of the first two are quite ambiguous and open to many interpretations. Alexandria, on the other hand, is much more explicit about its themes. The novel is set around a thousand years from now in a tiny religious community in the Fens. Some time is spent establishing the community members and their theology, which is based on rejecting the technology and capitalism of the past that resulted in environmental collapse:
For the most part, I did not find this mythology as profound as it was perhaps intended to be. It probably didn't help that the linguistic world-building in Alexandria is far less ambitious and interesting than that of The Wake, or indeed Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. The narrative is compelling, although the characters' personal conflicts and concerns did not have much impact. Their interactions with their environment were much more vivid. Kingsnorth neatly sets up an existential conflict between the little community and the mysterious Alexandria.
The book's conclusion initially struck me as interesting. Then, by frankly eerie coincidence, the next novel I read covered the exact same philosophical ground and arrived at the same conclusion! The This by Adam Roberts is completely different structurally and stylistically to Alexandria; I had no expectations of similarity between the two. Yet both centre upon the same existential conflict and reach the same ending, via very different routes. I found the treatment of embodied individuality versus collective disembodiment in The This far more original, nuanced, and thought-provoking. Although Alexandria could arguably be described as a sci-fi novel, the central conflict is personalised to a limiting extent that I associate more with literary fiction. I appreciate the ideas that Kingsnorth raises, but they are examined much more effectively in The This.
Finally, I am curious about the significance of swans as portents in Alexandria. Is this a hint of English nationalism, which Kingsnorth devoted an essay to in Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays, or are they just visually striking?
Bak then
Man ate air and time
Breathin Machine at Sun up and down
Man said:
I can not live in this world
I need an other
Then sea becomin plain and wood stone
Up became down, Truth lies
Bodies bent, minds blinded
No folks knowin their true shape
All bounds broken, all Truths crakked
All lookin in, none see out
All things are same now in me tellin said Man
For me words say it
No thing is true
So all things are
For the most part, I did not find this mythology as profound as it was perhaps intended to be. It probably didn't help that the linguistic world-building in Alexandria is far less ambitious and interesting than that of The Wake, or indeed Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. The narrative is compelling, although the characters' personal conflicts and concerns did not have much impact. Their interactions with their environment were much more vivid. Kingsnorth neatly sets up an existential conflict between the little community and the mysterious Alexandria.
The book's conclusion initially struck me as interesting. Then, by frankly eerie coincidence, the next novel I read covered the exact same philosophical ground and arrived at the same conclusion! The This by Adam Roberts is completely different structurally and stylistically to Alexandria; I had no expectations of similarity between the two. Yet both centre upon the same existential conflict and reach the same ending, via very different routes. I found the treatment of embodied individuality versus collective disembodiment in The This far more original, nuanced, and thought-provoking. Although Alexandria could arguably be described as a sci-fi novel, the central conflict is personalised to a limiting extent that I associate more with literary fiction. I appreciate the ideas that Kingsnorth raises, but they are examined much more effectively in The This.
Finally, I am curious about the significance of swans as portents in Alexandria. Is this a hint of English nationalism, which Kingsnorth devoted an essay to in Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays, or are they just visually striking?
January 15, 2021
I’ve read three of his novels now, a couple short stories, and a few interviews, and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Paul Kingsnorth. It says something that I keep reading his books. I have my criticisms (as my reviews here show), but I consider him one of the most interesting writers of my generation. Even when I disagree with him, I read him, because there’s always a fresh insight or a fascinating new turn in the development of his ideas.
If you’re new to Kingsnorth, it may help to know that he began his career as an environmental activist and journalist. He became disillusioned with environmentalism in its globalist mode, convinced of our inability as a species to control our passions and collectively roll back the clock on climate change and other environmental depredations. At the same time, he saw an increasingly interconnected and globalized monoculture’s eradication of traditional ways of life (in the West no less than elsewhere) as an expression of the same destructive impulse. Some years ago he disconnected from what he considered the worst of contemporary life and moved with his family to an out of the way corner of western Ireland.
The present title is the third in a very loose “trilogy” (which need not be read in order) that begins with The Wake. Set about a thousand years ago in England at the time of the Norman Conquest, The Wake is an incredibly ambitious novel and still my favorite of Kingsnorth’s books, narrated by a dispossessed Anglo-Saxon landholder in a sort of invented dialect that mimics old English. It’s hard going for the first twenty or so pages but it’s a good story and the experiment pays off. The novella Beast comes next, set in the same general region of England but at the present day. It tracks the mental collapse of a man driven into a sort of self-exile from the digital world.
With Alexandria, which has the ambition of The Wake, Kingsnorth takes a stab at speculative (or, to stretch the term slightly, science) fiction. The story is set a thousand years in the future and long after an apocalyptic catastrophe that’s never fully explained. It’s narrated by the members of a small tribal community in a dialect of their own (also invented by Kingsnorth, but which is easier to follow than that dialect of the earlier book). These people may or may not be the last human beings on earth. But there’s something else in the woods too, a red stalker, watching them. Finally this stalker begins to narrate the story of their encounter as well. His voice comes as a shock, and the course of the novel takes some unexpected turns.
You may avert your eyes at this point if you wish, but I’m not really spoiling anything by telling you the following. This intruder, named “K,” is an emissary of sorts from a place called “Alexandria,” which is ruled over by someone called “Wayland.” The names are intentionally evocative, Alexandria bringing to mind the Greco-Egyptian city that housed the greatest library of the ancient word, Wayland the old Germanic myth of Wayland the Smith. You soon learn that K is trying to convert the few straggling remnants of the village into citizens of Alexandria, which has already claimed so many of their community’s former members. But what exactly is Alexandria? And who is Wayland?
Kingsnorth is a good enough writer that his ideas don’t smother his storytelling, but Alexandria is clearly his way of exploring what he considers two possible avenues beyond a future of inevitable cataclysm. As I read it, one path represents something like a willful retreat to the small-scale subsistence tribal communities of a revised but semi-barbaric Neolithic; the other a quasi-progressive Platonic essentialism where liberty (or damnation?) is achieved through the stripping away of sex, race, tribe, attachments, tastes, opinions, home, and history.
What to make of Alexandria in the end? It makes for good reading, I’ll give Kingsnorth that much, and it’s the kind of book you return to in your mind for weeks afterward. Personally, I don’t see the world in quite the terms Kingsnorth sees them; I share his frustration with what I agree are the irrevocable flaws of our nature, our hubris, violence, lust, avarice, etc., but (perhaps because I am a Catholic) I would characterize the crisis differently and anticipate other avenues of reconciliation. Where will Kingsnorth go from here? I don’t know, but I look forward to reading whatever comes next.
3.5 stars but I'm rounding up in this case
If you’re new to Kingsnorth, it may help to know that he began his career as an environmental activist and journalist. He became disillusioned with environmentalism in its globalist mode, convinced of our inability as a species to control our passions and collectively roll back the clock on climate change and other environmental depredations. At the same time, he saw an increasingly interconnected and globalized monoculture’s eradication of traditional ways of life (in the West no less than elsewhere) as an expression of the same destructive impulse. Some years ago he disconnected from what he considered the worst of contemporary life and moved with his family to an out of the way corner of western Ireland.
The present title is the third in a very loose “trilogy” (which need not be read in order) that begins with The Wake. Set about a thousand years ago in England at the time of the Norman Conquest, The Wake is an incredibly ambitious novel and still my favorite of Kingsnorth’s books, narrated by a dispossessed Anglo-Saxon landholder in a sort of invented dialect that mimics old English. It’s hard going for the first twenty or so pages but it’s a good story and the experiment pays off. The novella Beast comes next, set in the same general region of England but at the present day. It tracks the mental collapse of a man driven into a sort of self-exile from the digital world.
With Alexandria, which has the ambition of The Wake, Kingsnorth takes a stab at speculative (or, to stretch the term slightly, science) fiction. The story is set a thousand years in the future and long after an apocalyptic catastrophe that’s never fully explained. It’s narrated by the members of a small tribal community in a dialect of their own (also invented by Kingsnorth, but which is easier to follow than that dialect of the earlier book). These people may or may not be the last human beings on earth. But there’s something else in the woods too, a red stalker, watching them. Finally this stalker begins to narrate the story of their encounter as well. His voice comes as a shock, and the course of the novel takes some unexpected turns.
You may avert your eyes at this point if you wish, but I’m not really spoiling anything by telling you the following. This intruder, named “K,” is an emissary of sorts from a place called “Alexandria,” which is ruled over by someone called “Wayland.” The names are intentionally evocative, Alexandria bringing to mind the Greco-Egyptian city that housed the greatest library of the ancient word, Wayland the old Germanic myth of Wayland the Smith. You soon learn that K is trying to convert the few straggling remnants of the village into citizens of Alexandria, which has already claimed so many of their community’s former members. But what exactly is Alexandria? And who is Wayland?
Kingsnorth is a good enough writer that his ideas don’t smother his storytelling, but Alexandria is clearly his way of exploring what he considers two possible avenues beyond a future of inevitable cataclysm. As I read it, one path represents something like a willful retreat to the small-scale subsistence tribal communities of a revised but semi-barbaric Neolithic; the other a quasi-progressive Platonic essentialism where liberty (or damnation?) is achieved through the stripping away of sex, race, tribe, attachments, tastes, opinions, home, and history.
What to make of Alexandria in the end? It makes for good reading, I’ll give Kingsnorth that much, and it’s the kind of book you return to in your mind for weeks afterward. Personally, I don’t see the world in quite the terms Kingsnorth sees them; I share his frustration with what I agree are the irrevocable flaws of our nature, our hubris, violence, lust, avarice, etc., but (perhaps because I am a Catholic) I would characterize the crisis differently and anticipate other avenues of reconciliation. Where will Kingsnorth go from here? I don’t know, but I look forward to reading whatever comes next.
3.5 stars but I'm rounding up in this case
October 22, 2020
I... am not really sure what I think about this. It was worth the journey, but I will need to mull it over for some time. But this is true of all the books in the trilogy, I think. I kind of think I need to reread The Wake and Beast to pull this together even more in my head.
It's probably not for everyone, but I think if you are someone who enjoyed The Wake you will enjoy this. Linguistically, it's less of a challenge, though it is still a bit challenging in places. Actually, I expected future English in the book to be much more challenging, and part of me is disappointed it wasn't. :D But that isn't what the book is about.
Five stars because, like The Wake, this one will stick with me for a while. Haunting and lyrical.
It's probably not for everyone, but I think if you are someone who enjoyed The Wake you will enjoy this. Linguistically, it's less of a challenge, though it is still a bit challenging in places. Actually, I expected future English in the book to be much more challenging, and part of me is disappointed it wasn't. :D But that isn't what the book is about.
Five stars because, like The Wake, this one will stick with me for a while. Haunting and lyrical.
December 29, 2021
Astonishing. The Road meets Piranesi meets Out of the Silent Planet.
January 5, 2023
(3,5/5)
June 25, 2021
This is the concluding bookend to Kingsnorth's trilogy that includes "The Wake" (which I've read) and "Beast" (which I've not yet read) and is nearly every bit as good as "The Wake" in my humble opinion. Kingsnorth, simply put, contrasts the need for humans to reestablish a meaningful connection with the natural world that we all live in--to be part of it--or give ourselves completely into the hands of technology, especially high-tech and even artificial intelligence (all of which, Kingsnorth posits, leads to a disconnection to the world around us, with devastating consequences). In "The Wake" he used the apocalypse of the Norman Conquest in 1066 as the event that shifted Britons from their spiritual connection with the forests, fens, sky, and sea, to the religious and secular strictures imposed by their Norman overlords (i.e., a civilized new order). "Alexandria" takes place probably 2,000 years later and is just as apocalyptic, as a small band of native Britons desperately cling on to their quiet, land-based way of life while facing the truly cataclysmic results of climate change and an even deeper threat. Kingsnorth develops a "shadow-tongue" for this novel too, but it is much easier to decipher and become comfortable with than that used in "The Wake" (which had as its basis, Anglo-Saxon, or Old English). This book is original and thought provoking on so many levels.
January 14, 2024
4.4*
Un gran llibre, filosòfic en el sentit que ens fa raonar sobre el significat de ser humà. Escrit amb mestratge i bellesa. Espectacular la manera com l'autor juga amb el llenguatge i la seva possible futura evolució, lloable la tasca del traductor. Em vindria molt de gust llegir els altres llibres de la trilogia. Una agradable sorpresa.
Un gran llibre, filosòfic en el sentit que ens fa raonar sobre el significat de ser humà. Escrit amb mestratge i bellesa. Espectacular la manera com l'autor juga amb el llenguatge i la seva possible futura evolució, lloable la tasca del traductor. Em vindria molt de gust llegir els altres llibres de la trilogia. Una agradable sorpresa.
February 18, 2021
Alexandria is a 5 star book for a variety of reasons. If you don’t know Paul Kingsnorth, you should. If you haven’t read Paul Kingsnorth, you should. Very few people know of Paul Kingsnorth. Let me give you a brief bio. Yes I will get around to reviewing ALEXANDRIA but you need to know a little about Paul in order to appreciate his latest effort. Paul is an Oxford educated “ recovered”environmentalist poet and writer, mostly of essays. For the past 5 years he has been writing novels and Alexandria is the last in a trilogy which includes. The Wake , Beast, and now Alexandria. He is more well known in the UK and he resides with his family on his farm on the West coast of Ireland. He is one of the cofounders of “The Dark Mountain Project”, a literary project exploring new ways of art, writing and philosophy. Paul gave up ‘trying to save the world” by environmental activism about a decade ago as a feckless quest and has been trying to point to a new way of thinking and writing about this human experience outside of the rubric we call “civilization.” He thinks our civilization has passed its sell by date. In some of his essays he has called for “Uncivilization.” One quote by Emerson in one of his books says”the end of the human race is that it will eventually die of civilization.” Paul says that before the industrial civilization and the beginnings of the novel, mankind lived by its stories, a way of thinking and living that has been lost by a world of industrial warfare, economic expansion and technological narcissism. Paul wants to bring back storytelling as something far more than an art form, back to the function it enjoyed since not long after man climbed down from the trees.In a sentence, civilization is doomed and we need better stories, not more novels which spring from the brains of urban writers who only know of urban things. Now to Alexandria……..
Alexandria takes place somewhere in SE England about 900 years hence in the same boggy peaty wetland of the previous two novels. The SHTF some time previously with global warming, ocean rise, dieoff and all the rest. We are introduced to our little family unit living a Neolithic lifestyle of hunting and gathering and paying rapt attention to animism and prophesy and dreams and of course story telling. All the while this little survivalist cult is dodging the “Stalkers” who are spying on them and trying to encourage exile to the gated community of Alexandria which is some sort of soul only Utopia established by someone or something called Wayland. Think of Wayland as God and Alexandria as Heaven. But not really, and it’s hard to figure out what it’s all about other than a way to finally clear the earth of the last humans who of course wrecked the planet for the last 900 years. The stalker has some luck peeling off some of the members of this extended social group until there are only 5 left, Father and mother, Sfia(Sophia?) and Nigel and El, their girl child. The narrative unfolds via soliloquys from the group. Eventually they are forced to abandon their settlement and voyage by canoe on a quest to the west following Father who has already left after having a dream prophecy which among other things predicts the fall of Alexandria” when the Swans return.”
It’s more entertaining than it sounds and it has elements of other dystopian fiction like Brave New World and The Road. It is life after the collapse in a matriarchal society.
I was curious about the people and place names like Alexandria and Wayland. Alexandria was founded by Alexander the great and became a center of culture and trade and science with a huge library. It fell to Islam in the 7th century and dwindled over the next millennium plus . Wayland also spelled Weyland as well as a host of other names comes from Icelandic and Germanic mythology. This paragraph from Britannica.com lays out the saga:
Wayland the Smith, Wayland also spelled Weland, in Scandinavian, German, and Anglo-Saxon legend, a smith of outstanding skill. He was, according to some legends, a lord of the elves. His story is told in the Völundarkvida, one of the poems in the 13th-century Icelandic Elder, or Poetic, Edda, and, with variations, in the mid-13th-century Icelandic prose Thidriks saga. He is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon poems Waldere and “Deor,” in Beowulf (all from the 6th to the 9th century), and in a note inserted by Alfred the Great into his 9th-century translation of Boëthius
Wayland was captured by the Swedish king Nídud (Nithad, or Níduth), lamed(hamstringed) to prevent his escape, and forced to work in the king’s smithy. In revenge, he killed Nídud’s two young sons and made drinking bowls from their skulls, which he sent to their father. He also raped their sister, Bödvild, when she brought a gold ring to be mended, and then he escaped by magical flight through the air.
Later versions have Bodvild pregnant and happily married to Wayland.
Your guess is as good as mine on why Paul Kingsnorth chose that name but Paul has long been a fan of Celtic and Norse mythology. Wayland was a mythic and godlike figure who got his revenge and wound up with the girl to boot.
If you subscribe to the vision of the Dark Mountain Project, this book should be on your bucket list. The book has a beguiling dreamlike quality which really pulled me along to a not surprising end.
Alexandria takes place somewhere in SE England about 900 years hence in the same boggy peaty wetland of the previous two novels. The SHTF some time previously with global warming, ocean rise, dieoff and all the rest. We are introduced to our little family unit living a Neolithic lifestyle of hunting and gathering and paying rapt attention to animism and prophesy and dreams and of course story telling. All the while this little survivalist cult is dodging the “Stalkers” who are spying on them and trying to encourage exile to the gated community of Alexandria which is some sort of soul only Utopia established by someone or something called Wayland. Think of Wayland as God and Alexandria as Heaven. But not really, and it’s hard to figure out what it’s all about other than a way to finally clear the earth of the last humans who of course wrecked the planet for the last 900 years. The stalker has some luck peeling off some of the members of this extended social group until there are only 5 left, Father and mother, Sfia(Sophia?) and Nigel and El, their girl child. The narrative unfolds via soliloquys from the group. Eventually they are forced to abandon their settlement and voyage by canoe on a quest to the west following Father who has already left after having a dream prophecy which among other things predicts the fall of Alexandria” when the Swans return.”
It’s more entertaining than it sounds and it has elements of other dystopian fiction like Brave New World and The Road. It is life after the collapse in a matriarchal society.
I was curious about the people and place names like Alexandria and Wayland. Alexandria was founded by Alexander the great and became a center of culture and trade and science with a huge library. It fell to Islam in the 7th century and dwindled over the next millennium plus . Wayland also spelled Weyland as well as a host of other names comes from Icelandic and Germanic mythology. This paragraph from Britannica.com lays out the saga:
Wayland the Smith, Wayland also spelled Weland, in Scandinavian, German, and Anglo-Saxon legend, a smith of outstanding skill. He was, according to some legends, a lord of the elves. His story is told in the Völundarkvida, one of the poems in the 13th-century Icelandic Elder, or Poetic, Edda, and, with variations, in the mid-13th-century Icelandic prose Thidriks saga. He is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon poems Waldere and “Deor,” in Beowulf (all from the 6th to the 9th century), and in a note inserted by Alfred the Great into his 9th-century translation of Boëthius
Wayland was captured by the Swedish king Nídud (Nithad, or Níduth), lamed(hamstringed) to prevent his escape, and forced to work in the king’s smithy. In revenge, he killed Nídud’s two young sons and made drinking bowls from their skulls, which he sent to their father. He also raped their sister, Bödvild, when she brought a gold ring to be mended, and then he escaped by magical flight through the air.
Later versions have Bodvild pregnant and happily married to Wayland.
Your guess is as good as mine on why Paul Kingsnorth chose that name but Paul has long been a fan of Celtic and Norse mythology. Wayland was a mythic and godlike figure who got his revenge and wound up with the girl to boot.
If you subscribe to the vision of the Dark Mountain Project, this book should be on your bucket list. The book has a beguiling dreamlike quality which really pulled me along to a not surprising end.
November 29, 2025
Paul Kingsnorth was a pagan before he became a Christian, and this book is pretty much what you'd expect from someone who has soured on paganism but isn't quite ready to make the leap to Christianity. Not as good as The Wake, far better than Beast, and a satisfying enough ending to the trilogy that pairs very well with his essay "The Cross and the Machine"
December 20, 2021
A worthy conclusion to the Buckmaster trilogy. The Wake saw the post-1066 Anglo-Saxon rebellion against the Normans and their “invader religion”, Beast was a contemporary struggle for meaning and connection and now we leap forward into the future of the same English region in Alexandria.
As with Margaret Atwood’s much-hyped The Testaments we receive alternating perspectives from the small group of characters. Through their thoughts we can witness “Recovering Environmentalist” Kingsnorth arguing with himself as he gives each viewpoint (scientific, spiritual, the physical, the transhuman etc) a fair hearing. There are no easy answers to be found as the characters grapple and struggle with their uncertainty in a chaotic, constantly shifting world.
As with Margaret Atwood’s much-hyped The Testaments we receive alternating perspectives from the small group of characters. Through their thoughts we can witness “Recovering Environmentalist” Kingsnorth arguing with himself as he gives each viewpoint (scientific, spiritual, the physical, the transhuman etc) a fair hearing. There are no easy answers to be found as the characters grapple and struggle with their uncertainty in a chaotic, constantly shifting world.
March 6, 2021
This is a great book: philosophical, myth-making, action and beauty, human and not. Set a thousand years hence, it builds an incredible tension and eeriness over great mysteries, towards a fateful end. Profound, moving, and a page-turner. There is a unity in it, balance, a work of art, reading it is like undergoing a rite of testing, through disharmony and doubt to necessity and a purification. About what it means to be human, the horrors and joys, pain and frustrations, loves and hates, regrets and responsibilities. Or at least a good story, masterfully told.
March 24, 2021
I am still finding myself in the midst of this mythic world that Kingsnorth created. It took me some patience & time to adjust to the language and form, but once there, I found it an profound journey. In its embrace of a distant future earth destroyed by human-caused climate and other changes, one could call it pessimistic. It was a hard story at times, yes, but I considered it a mythic warning. The characters had depth and spoke of their world in a language all their own. Worth every moment of the time I gave to its reading.
September 5, 2021
I generally didn't care for this book for most of it. I almost quit it entirely somewhere around 1/4 through, but finished it out of my love for The Wake, the first of this trilogy. I came around a little more to it in the latter half, but it still wasn't my jam.
Like The Wake, this mostly isn't written in modern English. Here, it's another shadow tongue, I suppose, projecting what English might be like several hundred years in the future. Some of Kingsnorth's choices make sense (there are fewer double consonants like "ck" when a simple "k" will do; several double vowel diphthongs are also reduced), but others are real head scratchers (I'm not sure why "yesterday" would become "yester day" or "another" become "an other" (if anything, I'd guess that become "a nother")). There's also relatively little punctuation, and grammatical structure is looser. Some pronouns, like "my" are gone in favor of "me." On the whole, I found it pretty readable, if puzzling sometimes.
In terms of the story, it's set several hundred years after humanity has completely screwed up the earth with climate change. There are only a handful of humans left, and most animals seem to be gone too. At the same time, there is still this AI construct that exists at a distance. The story involves the handful of humans interacting with an emissary of that AI, who is trying to recruit them individually to join in the construct. It sounds like a stand-in for Heaven, but the remaining humans have their own religious system that makes this seem threatening to them. They even have a mythology, clearly derived from Christianity/Judaism, wherein a certain Sir Pent once deceived humans and set them on their course to ruin (🐍). Anyway, K, the emissary, talks with some of the humans and we learn more about humanity's past — our present and future — and how they screwed up the world but Wayland, the AI, saved humanity. It's all very nice.
Unlike The Wake, this story is told from multiple perspectives. We get a handful of humans (mother, father, nzil, el, sfia), and K becomes a POV character at around the halfway point. Apart from K, who uses English closer to modern English, the other characters all use Kingsnorth's futuristic English. I had no problem reading that, per se, but it was hard to distinguish these different characters from the writing alone. When sentences lack grammar and punctuation, it can be hard to tell who speaks more longwinded than others, and that sort of thing. As for K, he mostly speaks in exposition dumps, explaining why humanity is bad. He reminded me of Agent Smith from The Matrix, giving his "humanity is a virus" speech in a pretty surprisingly close parallel.
There are some interesting ideas here, and the book does work well thematically with The Wake and the second book, Beast, but on the whole I didn't enjoy it.
Like The Wake, this mostly isn't written in modern English. Here, it's another shadow tongue, I suppose, projecting what English might be like several hundred years in the future. Some of Kingsnorth's choices make sense (there are fewer double consonants like "ck" when a simple "k" will do; several double vowel diphthongs are also reduced), but others are real head scratchers (I'm not sure why "yesterday" would become "yester day" or "another" become "an other" (if anything, I'd guess that become "a nother")). There's also relatively little punctuation, and grammatical structure is looser. Some pronouns, like "my" are gone in favor of "me." On the whole, I found it pretty readable, if puzzling sometimes.
In terms of the story, it's set several hundred years after humanity has completely screwed up the earth with climate change. There are only a handful of humans left, and most animals seem to be gone too. At the same time, there is still this AI construct that exists at a distance. The story involves the handful of humans interacting with an emissary of that AI, who is trying to recruit them individually to join in the construct. It sounds like a stand-in for Heaven, but the remaining humans have their own religious system that makes this seem threatening to them. They even have a mythology, clearly derived from Christianity/Judaism, wherein a certain Sir Pent once deceived humans and set them on their course to ruin (🐍). Anyway, K, the emissary, talks with some of the humans and we learn more about humanity's past — our present and future — and how they screwed up the world but Wayland, the AI, saved humanity. It's all very nice.
Unlike The Wake, this story is told from multiple perspectives. We get a handful of humans (mother, father, nzil, el, sfia), and K becomes a POV character at around the halfway point. Apart from K, who uses English closer to modern English, the other characters all use Kingsnorth's futuristic English. I had no problem reading that, per se, but it was hard to distinguish these different characters from the writing alone. When sentences lack grammar and punctuation, it can be hard to tell who speaks more longwinded than others, and that sort of thing. As for K, he mostly speaks in exposition dumps, explaining why humanity is bad. He reminded me of Agent Smith from The Matrix, giving his "humanity is a virus" speech in a pretty surprisingly close parallel.
There are some interesting ideas here, and the book does work well thematically with The Wake and the second book, Beast, but on the whole I didn't enjoy it.
July 4, 2021
4.5 stars. You can't fault Kingsnorth's writing - it's excellent. He is a brilliant writer.
The story captures very well what the collapse of civilization looks like, including the device of using simplified english to tell the story. Kingsnorth articulates the telos of the technological drive in our world as uploading minds into a giant quantum computer that runs on the ecological cycles of the earth. This strikes me as a pretty good summary, actually. Ironically, the 'computer' fails in a flood, which seems to work: a hyper-ordered system designed to eliminate chaos breaks, and the land is flooded.
The saving of K at the end fits well symbolically with Christianity, as it resembles the way in which although all technology results from the fall, it is redeemed in the New Jerusalem. Thus the remnant, or what could be saved from Wayland is saved.
The book was published before Kingsnorth became a convert to Christianity. It therefore retains a neo-pagan vibe. Naturally, I don't think that's an adequate account of the world, but I think the intuition that after the flood resulting from the breakdown of Wayland there is a new beginning of some neo-pagan thingo about cycles of the earth etc etc is accurate. If you build a system (like modernity) designed to eliminate the mythic from people's consciousnesses, all the myths come flooding back if the system breaks.
Kingsnorth has a strong emphasis on ecological breakdown as being part of the end of society. Historically, the fall of other civilizations tends to involve ecological problems of one kind or another. So, this is accurate, but he does well in placing the blame on a disordered relationship with nature, rather than with humanity.
Overall, this was a better than average dystopian novel, since it assesses fairly clearly the problems of our techno-machine society, the trajectory we are on, and the elements that will arise following its fall.
The story captures very well what the collapse of civilization looks like, including the device of using simplified english to tell the story. Kingsnorth articulates the telos of the technological drive in our world as uploading minds into a giant quantum computer that runs on the ecological cycles of the earth. This strikes me as a pretty good summary, actually. Ironically, the 'computer' fails in a flood, which seems to work: a hyper-ordered system designed to eliminate chaos breaks, and the land is flooded.
The saving of K at the end fits well symbolically with Christianity, as it resembles the way in which although all technology results from the fall, it is redeemed in the New Jerusalem. Thus the remnant, or what could be saved from Wayland is saved.
The book was published before Kingsnorth became a convert to Christianity. It therefore retains a neo-pagan vibe. Naturally, I don't think that's an adequate account of the world, but I think the intuition that after the flood resulting from the breakdown of Wayland there is a new beginning of some neo-pagan thingo about cycles of the earth etc etc is accurate. If you build a system (like modernity) designed to eliminate the mythic from people's consciousnesses, all the myths come flooding back if the system breaks.
Kingsnorth has a strong emphasis on ecological breakdown as being part of the end of society. Historically, the fall of other civilizations tends to involve ecological problems of one kind or another. So, this is accurate, but he does well in placing the blame on a disordered relationship with nature, rather than with humanity.
Overall, this was a better than average dystopian novel, since it assesses fairly clearly the problems of our techno-machine society, the trajectory we are on, and the elements that will arise following its fall.
March 11, 2021
Lyrical, elemental, more than a bit insane. Sits somewhere, somehow, in the hitherto unrealised space between Greg Egan's Permutation City and an Old English poem. Is it soft sci fi? Is it environmental? Is it a novel about human lives? Who the hell knows - not me, at least not after one reading. A fitting finale to the howl of rage that was The Wake, and the visceral grip of Beast. Kingsnorth changed the way I see the world with his Dark Mountain project, and Alexandria continues on the path into relentless, painful, beautiful questioning of what we're for and what we should do about it.
October 28, 2023
If I could give 0 stars I would
March 17, 2022
‘Wake’ opened the trilogy. ‘Beast’ followed that. This book, ‘Alexandria’, closes the set. Not well, but sufficiently so. On a shallow-surface reading, without thinking heavily and roving into Kingsnorth’s ‘politics’ (for lack of a better or more apt term), I can see why this book amazes some, bores others to death, and also gets its share of average reviews. The language took me a spell - pun intended, always - to get my mind around, and I am sure many readers will see it as needless or over-complicating. The structure of the novel was also a bit uneven. The POV changes and canto interludes led to a “pitched sea” read for me. I was surprised how little the future deviated from the present (Beast) or past (Wake) with respect to many social conventions and thought paradigms, though if one reads the author's essays it is less surprising. 'Alexandria' fits the overall concept, but lent little in the way of excitement or novelty to what transpires. I felt an undercurrent of oversimplification, a bit too much of a black-and-white/this-or-that concept to the plotting. A surprise for me, knowing Kingsnorth is in no way an uncomplicated person. Still, it fits the overall concept, but it still leaves the plot feeling shallow and basic. In total, this book is much less a story and much more a treatise-polemic, not entirely unexpected considering, but still not all that interesting as a story. In some ways, the text leans toward the mistaken and scary notion of a true “land before” - well, before now anyway - and that smacks of nationalism, ultra-right wing buffoonery, and a distinctive brand of hatred and violence that I don’t care to align myself with, nor do I enjoy it, even metaphorically, as a foundation for a mythic-fictional moral-dystopian tale (Kingsnorth's thought is similar, though not the same, and significantly more nuanced and academic-leaning. Not for dummies, for sure.).
I found this enjoyable to read, partly because I liked what he did with the language quite a lot (words and linguistics and alphabets and stuff like that are my loves) even if it wasn’t all that removed from current language(s), and partly because I have several shared feelings with Kingsnorth about humanity, so those larger issues and ideas and analyses allowed me to expand a mundane story and ponder/mull over a score of contentious social issues and concerns I have with humans, technology, capitalism, technology, and choice. But read my * section for more of that, or just read Kingsnorth’s essays and watch his interviews for much more articulate discussions and explanations. Warning: he is anti-vax, which i HATE, but I understand he takes the vaccines as a metaphor for State Control, something else I HATE. I told you he is complex...
Anyway.
A book that isn’t amazing but also isn’t awful (as my wife would say about things that just sort of come and then go without much need for remark), but as the bookend to a trilogy it feels appropriate. Still, after ‘Wake’, I had higher hopes, or, more accurately, a different expectation or vision for where this was going, so I will say I finished this book disappointed. My rating should be a one- or two-star, but as the book indulges my thinking organ, I gave it three. I like thinking.
*It would hard to read this and ignore Kingsnorth’s environmental, social, economic, and political thoughts/positions. For me, anyway. I read a lot of what he writes and tend to agree with him more often than not. He is incredibly intelligent and articulate and his knowledge of social systems and ecological issues is vast, though contentious and at times alienating and extreme-leaning. I tend to agree with him often, even when his choices and/or opinions read as quite alarmist, or even selfish or privileged. One big agreement I have is how he hates the idea that humans fall back on hope s some sort of pseudo-system for change-repair. Hope for what?, he asks, and doesn’t that reliance on hope just belie a total lack of power, on any level, to actually change the trajectory of things? It is so passive and desperate feeling. Technology, our gift to the planet, is just going to kill our ability to survive here. Mostly, he see it all as too late for fixing, and I tend to think he is right, though I would like, most days, to be wrong. He thinks we will struggle to come to grips with the inevitable, but our insatiable need for more things and our unwillingness to put anything or anyone above our selfish individualism will spell our doom. As with many intelligent people, be careful of forming ideas about him or his thought based on pieces of his writings or talks, as much of what he says seems simple but is actually rather complex. He is a deep dive or he should be avoided, in my opinion.
I found this enjoyable to read, partly because I liked what he did with the language quite a lot (words and linguistics and alphabets and stuff like that are my loves) even if it wasn’t all that removed from current language(s), and partly because I have several shared feelings with Kingsnorth about humanity, so those larger issues and ideas and analyses allowed me to expand a mundane story and ponder/mull over a score of contentious social issues and concerns I have with humans, technology, capitalism, technology, and choice. But read my * section for more of that, or just read Kingsnorth’s essays and watch his interviews for much more articulate discussions and explanations. Warning: he is anti-vax, which i HATE, but I understand he takes the vaccines as a metaphor for State Control, something else I HATE. I told you he is complex...
Anyway.
A book that isn’t amazing but also isn’t awful (as my wife would say about things that just sort of come and then go without much need for remark), but as the bookend to a trilogy it feels appropriate. Still, after ‘Wake’, I had higher hopes, or, more accurately, a different expectation or vision for where this was going, so I will say I finished this book disappointed. My rating should be a one- or two-star, but as the book indulges my thinking organ, I gave it three. I like thinking.
*It would hard to read this and ignore Kingsnorth’s environmental, social, economic, and political thoughts/positions. For me, anyway. I read a lot of what he writes and tend to agree with him more often than not. He is incredibly intelligent and articulate and his knowledge of social systems and ecological issues is vast, though contentious and at times alienating and extreme-leaning. I tend to agree with him often, even when his choices and/or opinions read as quite alarmist, or even selfish or privileged. One big agreement I have is how he hates the idea that humans fall back on hope s some sort of pseudo-system for change-repair. Hope for what?, he asks, and doesn’t that reliance on hope just belie a total lack of power, on any level, to actually change the trajectory of things? It is so passive and desperate feeling. Technology, our gift to the planet, is just going to kill our ability to survive here. Mostly, he see it all as too late for fixing, and I tend to think he is right, though I would like, most days, to be wrong. He thinks we will struggle to come to grips with the inevitable, but our insatiable need for more things and our unwillingness to put anything or anyone above our selfish individualism will spell our doom. As with many intelligent people, be careful of forming ideas about him or his thought based on pieces of his writings or talks, as much of what he says seems simple but is actually rather complex. He is a deep dive or he should be avoided, in my opinion.
February 25, 2023
Lo que más destaco de esta historia es como está escrita. No puede hablar de la versión original, pero por la traducción se aprecia una voluntad de usar el lenguaje para reflejar los cambios y la evolución del entorno. El mensaje es bastante potente y te hace reflexionar sobre algunos aspectos de nuestro día a día. Los personajes son todos muy diferentes entre ellos y representan diferentes puntos de vista; el que más me ha gustado es la pequeña El.
Más reseñas en Barcelona n' Books: http://barcelonanbooks.blogspot.com.e...
Más reseñas en Barcelona n' Books: http://barcelonanbooks.blogspot.com.e...
October 2, 2024
Other reviewers have described a lot of the thematic elements and the plot, so I won't do that. Kingsnorth's writing is eccentric. I loved how he used language in Wake, and then, like most readers, I pretty much hated Beast. I was hoping Alexandria would redeem the pseudo-trilogy for me, and it certainly did. But it wasn't straightforward. The progression of my attitude towards this book:
-skeptical, somewhat confused, but I like Kingsnorth's writing so I'll keep going...
-intrigued
-want to stay up all night to find out what happens next
-confused... but still glad I read it
Once you start to grasp the context and understand the relationships of the characters, the story becomes very compelling. I have read some of Kingsnorth's nonfiction from the past couple of years, and I had a suspicion of where the story was going. However, part of my confusion at the end was based on the fact that Kingsnorth himself has undergone a monumental change since he wrote Alexandria. He converted to Orthodox Christianity from previously being a Wiccan, among other things. The ending really surprised me, and I wonder how it would have been different if he had been a Christian at the time of writing this book.
There is a lot of mystery around the character of Wayland, who at times is characterized as an evil AI singularity and/or demigod/consciousness, and at others as an almost Christian god of love. I say almost Christian because *spoiler alert* the Christian God promised never to flood the earth again after Noah's time, but Wayland does not adhere to that promise. Another questions about Wayland's world is in regard to the binary of body-good/mind and words-bad. I kept waiting for a response that introduced nuance to this, but all we really got was the old Wiccan Kingsnorth's woo view of "the earth is a body and a mind and everyone is a part of it." This is part of Wayland being both destructive and "loving,"I suppose. Wayland is a complicated entity, whoever he/it is.
The late character K is also a complicated one, but in my opinion he fell somewhat flat. His diatribes are so polemical they don't fit well with the rest of the book thematically, and although his character development is redeeming, it wasn't compelling for me. There were too many questions about K's origins for me to believe that he would change so much by the book's end.
My last thought was simply on the title of the book. Again, from reading Kingsnorth elsewhere, I suspect he named the book after the ancient city of Alexandria as referenced in the poem by C.P. Cavafy, "The God Abandons Antony." The only explanation for Wayland's actions that makes sense is the same one Cavafy attributes to Bacchus.
Overall, I loved this book. I have a lot of questions about it that will go unanswered, but it was one of my favorites that I've read in a long time (for the plot, the creative language use, the themes, etc.).
-skeptical, somewhat confused, but I like Kingsnorth's writing so I'll keep going...
-intrigued
-want to stay up all night to find out what happens next
-confused... but still glad I read it
Once you start to grasp the context and understand the relationships of the characters, the story becomes very compelling. I have read some of Kingsnorth's nonfiction from the past couple of years, and I had a suspicion of where the story was going. However, part of my confusion at the end was based on the fact that Kingsnorth himself has undergone a monumental change since he wrote Alexandria. He converted to Orthodox Christianity from previously being a Wiccan, among other things. The ending really surprised me, and I wonder how it would have been different if he had been a Christian at the time of writing this book.
There is a lot of mystery around the character of Wayland, who at times is characterized as an evil AI singularity and/or demigod/consciousness, and at others as an almost Christian god of love. I say almost Christian because *spoiler alert* the Christian God promised never to flood the earth again after Noah's time, but Wayland does not adhere to that promise. Another questions about Wayland's world is in regard to the binary of body-good/mind and words-bad. I kept waiting for a response that introduced nuance to this, but all we really got was the old Wiccan Kingsnorth's woo view of "the earth is a body and a mind and everyone is a part of it." This is part of Wayland being both destructive and "loving,"I suppose. Wayland is a complicated entity, whoever he/it is.
The late character K is also a complicated one, but in my opinion he fell somewhat flat. His diatribes are so polemical they don't fit well with the rest of the book thematically, and although his character development is redeeming, it wasn't compelling for me. There were too many questions about K's origins for me to believe that he would change so much by the book's end.
My last thought was simply on the title of the book. Again, from reading Kingsnorth elsewhere, I suspect he named the book after the ancient city of Alexandria as referenced in the poem by C.P. Cavafy, "The God Abandons Antony." The only explanation for Wayland's actions that makes sense is the same one Cavafy attributes to Bacchus.
Overall, I loved this book. I have a lot of questions about it that will go unanswered, but it was one of my favorites that I've read in a long time (for the plot, the creative language use, the themes, etc.).
March 15, 2022
Paul Kingsnorth writes great fiction.
Like Frank Herbert, a career shift from journalism to fiction gives the writer an edge. The ideas matter, but they must be expressed through action and dialogue. It is a thesis in motion. And it crowns well Kingsnorth's "trilogy" on the Fenns of England. The Dune comparison is apropos. The hero is the place, not a person. This bildungsroman is a chronicle with each installment set thousands of years apart where the only common hero, the Fenns, is in various processes of transformation. The Wake is the ascension of humanity, Beast is the collapse, and Alexandria covers the return of wilderness.
Like the Wake, this one is written in a "shadow tongue". Whereas the Wake used words from old-to-middle English so as to be readable but evoke a medieval feel, Alexandria is written in a kind of pidgin, omitting "the" and rarely conjugating the "g". It seems to transcend race or place. Readers who struggled with, say, Huck Finn, would struggle with this series. The narrative is told from various perspectives with seamless transitions. This improves flow compared to, say, Faulkner. The character development is remarkable. I was surprised how easily I could remember the narrator as I read along simply by the prudent writing.
As far as "world building", choice details are omitted so that you can use your imagination to understand the culture, the setting, and the language. Mine is this: there has been climate catastrophe with significant global warming. Our entourage is a surviving remnant of humanity regressed to a stone age, and toiling with little hope of survival "pickin plastik from Clay". They are a fearful people with a mythos on which they peg their survival; birds are angels/omens, they are constantly under threat of being abducted by stalkers on land, or "hungry ghasts" at sea.
Wayland as a kind of oversoul and his "kingdom" Alexandria is the thematic underpinning of everything. Our clan venerates a "whit Lady", a feminine deity who controls fate, and opposes Alexandria which requires that one give up their body to enter their mind in a kind of computer and achieve immortality. The stalkers, therefore, are something like missionaries or angels - grotesque to behold and preaching the "Good Word" that humans can be freed from Earthly suffering by consenting to ascend to Alexandria. Once finished, readers may take a serious double take at religion, especially Christianity, and how each promise contains a Faustian exchange. Even Christ reminds us that His burden is light - but note we do have to bear the burden to actually follow Him.
For a brief novella, this is an impactful piece that will resonate well among science fiction fans. It is not science fiction, however. Readers with a love of Anglish style writing, ala Tolkein, will also enjoy the celebration of language and culture in this writing.
Like Frank Herbert, a career shift from journalism to fiction gives the writer an edge. The ideas matter, but they must be expressed through action and dialogue. It is a thesis in motion. And it crowns well Kingsnorth's "trilogy" on the Fenns of England. The Dune comparison is apropos. The hero is the place, not a person. This bildungsroman is a chronicle with each installment set thousands of years apart where the only common hero, the Fenns, is in various processes of transformation. The Wake is the ascension of humanity, Beast is the collapse, and Alexandria covers the return of wilderness.
Like the Wake, this one is written in a "shadow tongue". Whereas the Wake used words from old-to-middle English so as to be readable but evoke a medieval feel, Alexandria is written in a kind of pidgin, omitting "the" and rarely conjugating the "g". It seems to transcend race or place. Readers who struggled with, say, Huck Finn, would struggle with this series. The narrative is told from various perspectives with seamless transitions. This improves flow compared to, say, Faulkner. The character development is remarkable. I was surprised how easily I could remember the narrator as I read along simply by the prudent writing.
As far as "world building", choice details are omitted so that you can use your imagination to understand the culture, the setting, and the language. Mine is this: there has been climate catastrophe with significant global warming. Our entourage is a surviving remnant of humanity regressed to a stone age, and toiling with little hope of survival "pickin plastik from Clay". They are a fearful people with a mythos on which they peg their survival; birds are angels/omens, they are constantly under threat of being abducted by stalkers on land, or "hungry ghasts" at sea.
Wayland as a kind of oversoul and his "kingdom" Alexandria is the thematic underpinning of everything. Our clan venerates a "whit Lady", a feminine deity who controls fate, and opposes Alexandria which requires that one give up their body to enter their mind in a kind of computer and achieve immortality. The stalkers, therefore, are something like missionaries or angels - grotesque to behold and preaching the "Good Word" that humans can be freed from Earthly suffering by consenting to ascend to Alexandria. Once finished, readers may take a serious double take at religion, especially Christianity, and how each promise contains a Faustian exchange. Even Christ reminds us that His burden is light - but note we do have to bear the burden to actually follow Him.
For a brief novella, this is an impactful piece that will resonate well among science fiction fans. It is not science fiction, however. Readers with a love of Anglish style writing, ala Tolkein, will also enjoy the celebration of language and culture in this writing.
January 19, 2022
I thought this book was brilliant, and I expect I’ll be fermenting on its meaning for quite a while. I still haven’t read The Wake or Beast, but I look forward to reading those as well. This book was innovative and enthralling, though the end stumped me a bit. There was a dynamism between the two perspectives of humanity that I thought was interesting, a deep love and a deep hatred. I think, if a reader is framed for it, this book offers a really compassionate view of humanity in the gentle and reverent way the Order walks through the world. The reviews that only listened to K’s interpretations of humanity and thought it was myopic or polemic and therefore felt defensive, well, that’s perhaps the lens through which they see humanity as well as our converging crises. Ultimately that isn’t the fault of Kingsnorth or his writing.
I would imagine this book is interpreted very differently to different people.
For example: It is a little astonishing to me to see reviews criticizing the book for “random capitalizations”— it should be rather clear that the capitalizations are an indication of reverence towards natural forces and beings, especially given the context of the book.
I would recommend.
I would imagine this book is interpreted very differently to different people.
For example: It is a little astonishing to me to see reviews criticizing the book for “random capitalizations”— it should be rather clear that the capitalizations are an indication of reverence towards natural forces and beings, especially given the context of the book.
I would recommend.
May 7, 2025
This is probably the best traditional book of the "trilogy". It doesn't rely on invented language or viewpoints of those who are increasingly losing touch with reality.
This book has a much clearer narrative than the others. It picks up 1000 years after the present day, where a small religious community focused on birds and living simply, giving their focus to their bodies and not machines. Through a slow reveal, often through sermons, and later through the agent of the "demon" Wayland, this is revealed as a small sect that attempted to avoid the exploitation and destruction of the natural world that gave rise to Wayland, an AI that has built a virtual city in Alexandria.
Eventually, Wayland falls under its own weight, and the remaining individuals converse with Wayland. Wayland did not arise from nothing - the book speaks about how a mind cannot create another mind without a body. Instead, they code Earth itself into him, and when humanity calls he answers. Wayland is an individual, and is not subject to control. K talks about how the ecological disaster that Wayland brings is an aspect of his love for Earth, and humans are part of that. Wayland is the avatar of Earth, and akin to a god, but indicates there is an even higher power. By entombing the consciousness of so many people forever, Alexandria (the AI server housing these people) acted as a dam. The dam metaphorically bursts, and waters literally rise.
I'm going to be honest - the ending was rather confusing. Everyone is happy, and a strange light comes from the North. Wayland and father also talk of an end to things, and a new cycle, but I'm not clear on what this means.
Beyond the strength of the plot, the characters are fully realized. Kingsnorth has a way with words and metaphor that give a real window into the inner lives of each character, and he does this while being concise. I've read books multiple times longer, with fewer principle characters, and they're not nearly as memorable as what is conjured here. You've got:
Mother, the spiritual leader of the Order. In the cyclical world, the Lady is supreme, and the previous age was masculine. She's older, and fierce - she threatens to kill Wayland's messengers to protect what is left of her people. There are many, many fewer than there were, with the remainder taken by Wayland.
Father - the male counterpart to mother, an elder. He is responsible for seeking answers at the Tower and communing with the birds. He's less hotheaded than mother.
Yrvidian - dies early in the book, but is the group's dreamer. He dreams prophecy.
Lorenso - Probably the most sympathetic character from my point of view. He's a young man, and there's nothing for him with the group. He craves human connection and seeks comfort in a tryst with Sfia, but seeks to leave when she ends it. He's the first to be convinced to ascend by K, and has a pretty moving dialogue about how his body is betraying him, and how that flew in the face of the religion he was brought up with.
Sfia, mother of El and wife of Nzil. She end the relationship with Lorenso, precipating him leaving the Order. She uses her sexuality to attempt to convince K that what he is doing is wrong.
Nzil - carver for the group. He carves totems for the group around their home. When El is taken by the sea people, he gives up and ascends. Unfortunately, this does not work, since Wayland has already fallen.
El - the young daughter of Sfia and Nzil. She approaches the world with a childlike way, and doesn't fully grasp that they're in the end of times. She later joins the Sea People, before returning to the group at the end.
K - the avatar of Wayland. He's a skinless engineered human, who maintains contact with Wayland wirelessly until Wayland falls. He exists to give Wayland's point of view in a series of debates as he seeks to convince the Order to ascend. His ultimate goal is to ascend his quota and then join Wayland. Once Wayland falls, he's completely lost, and talks with Father.
Beyond the cast, this book, like Kingsnorth's others, excels at setting a mood. Here, it's a real sense of decline, of living in the end of days but persevering through, in a way that I haven't encountered since Cormac McCarthy's The Road. There were some missed opportunities, however - either the Sea People should have been further developed or cut entirely, for example.
This book has a much clearer narrative than the others. It picks up 1000 years after the present day, where a small religious community focused on birds and living simply, giving their focus to their bodies and not machines. Through a slow reveal, often through sermons, and later through the agent of the "demon" Wayland, this is revealed as a small sect that attempted to avoid the exploitation and destruction of the natural world that gave rise to Wayland, an AI that has built a virtual city in Alexandria.
Eventually, Wayland falls under its own weight, and the remaining individuals converse with Wayland. Wayland did not arise from nothing - the book speaks about how a mind cannot create another mind without a body. Instead, they code Earth itself into him, and when humanity calls he answers. Wayland is an individual, and is not subject to control. K talks about how the ecological disaster that Wayland brings is an aspect of his love for Earth, and humans are part of that. Wayland is the avatar of Earth, and akin to a god, but indicates there is an even higher power. By entombing the consciousness of so many people forever, Alexandria (the AI server housing these people) acted as a dam. The dam metaphorically bursts, and waters literally rise.
I'm going to be honest - the ending was rather confusing. Everyone is happy, and a strange light comes from the North. Wayland and father also talk of an end to things, and a new cycle, but I'm not clear on what this means.
Beyond the strength of the plot, the characters are fully realized. Kingsnorth has a way with words and metaphor that give a real window into the inner lives of each character, and he does this while being concise. I've read books multiple times longer, with fewer principle characters, and they're not nearly as memorable as what is conjured here. You've got:
Mother, the spiritual leader of the Order. In the cyclical world, the Lady is supreme, and the previous age was masculine. She's older, and fierce - she threatens to kill Wayland's messengers to protect what is left of her people. There are many, many fewer than there were, with the remainder taken by Wayland.
Father - the male counterpart to mother, an elder. He is responsible for seeking answers at the Tower and communing with the birds. He's less hotheaded than mother.
Yrvidian - dies early in the book, but is the group's dreamer. He dreams prophecy.
Lorenso - Probably the most sympathetic character from my point of view. He's a young man, and there's nothing for him with the group. He craves human connection and seeks comfort in a tryst with Sfia, but seeks to leave when she ends it. He's the first to be convinced to ascend by K, and has a pretty moving dialogue about how his body is betraying him, and how that flew in the face of the religion he was brought up with.
Sfia, mother of El and wife of Nzil. She end the relationship with Lorenso, precipating him leaving the Order. She uses her sexuality to attempt to convince K that what he is doing is wrong.
Nzil - carver for the group. He carves totems for the group around their home. When El is taken by the sea people, he gives up and ascends. Unfortunately, this does not work, since Wayland has already fallen.
El - the young daughter of Sfia and Nzil. She approaches the world with a childlike way, and doesn't fully grasp that they're in the end of times. She later joins the Sea People, before returning to the group at the end.
K - the avatar of Wayland. He's a skinless engineered human, who maintains contact with Wayland wirelessly until Wayland falls. He exists to give Wayland's point of view in a series of debates as he seeks to convince the Order to ascend. His ultimate goal is to ascend his quota and then join Wayland. Once Wayland falls, he's completely lost, and talks with Father.
Beyond the cast, this book, like Kingsnorth's others, excels at setting a mood. Here, it's a real sense of decline, of living in the end of days but persevering through, in a way that I haven't encountered since Cormac McCarthy's The Road. There were some missed opportunities, however - either the Sea People should have been further developed or cut entirely, for example.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 1, 2021
Interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying.
First off, a couple of stray notes. Any novel that creates a new, unknown world must struggle between the task of painting a picture of that world that is both engrossing and consistent, but not at the expense of telling the story. Kingsnorth does this pretty well, in part because the reader is also distracted by decoding the odd spellings of a people that as far as we can tell, have no written language. One quickly grows accustomed to intuitive simplifications: “black” becomes “blak”, the definite article is dropped, but the lack of consistency distracts: Why does “wight” preserve a silent “gh”? – and what is a wight? I gather it’s a small animal that darts though the undergrowth, but this reader never figured out what. Was I supposed to know?
In “Star Trek” the difficulty of communicating with recently encountered alien creatures is solved plausibly enough for television, by the existence of a “universal translator”. But when a member of the community of primitives that are the focus of the story encounters a more sophisticated entity the lexical gulf between them magically disappears only to reappear when it suits. The primitive man understands words like “cupidity” but not “robot”.
Speaking of Star Trek, there is a process that might be considered analogous to “beaming up”, referred to as “ascending”, the difference being that ascending does not involve the physical transference of matter. Regardless, in one episode this process fails, and the failure is described amorphously, “…we began the process. His mind left him, it vaulted the gap, took to the diastolic channels, began the journey. But something happened. Something happened and I cannot say what…I cannot say where he went…”. The book takes place at least a thousand years in the future and this is a description of a technical failure?
I realize Kingsnorth was not trying to write science fiction, and pseudo-techno blather about flux capacitor polarity would be disruptive, but therein lies part of the novel’s problem.
The interesting part is the story’s unalloyed condemnation of Gnosticism. The idea that material existence is fundamentally flawed, or evil is as bogus today as it was in the first century, and the primitives in Alexandria make that eloquently clear. Sadly, the equally bogus heresy of Pantheism is held up as a worthy creed for its replacement.
First off, a couple of stray notes. Any novel that creates a new, unknown world must struggle between the task of painting a picture of that world that is both engrossing and consistent, but not at the expense of telling the story. Kingsnorth does this pretty well, in part because the reader is also distracted by decoding the odd spellings of a people that as far as we can tell, have no written language. One quickly grows accustomed to intuitive simplifications: “black” becomes “blak”, the definite article is dropped, but the lack of consistency distracts: Why does “wight” preserve a silent “gh”? – and what is a wight? I gather it’s a small animal that darts though the undergrowth, but this reader never figured out what. Was I supposed to know?
In “Star Trek” the difficulty of communicating with recently encountered alien creatures is solved plausibly enough for television, by the existence of a “universal translator”. But when a member of the community of primitives that are the focus of the story encounters a more sophisticated entity the lexical gulf between them magically disappears only to reappear when it suits. The primitive man understands words like “cupidity” but not “robot”.
Speaking of Star Trek, there is a process that might be considered analogous to “beaming up”, referred to as “ascending”, the difference being that ascending does not involve the physical transference of matter. Regardless, in one episode this process fails, and the failure is described amorphously, “…we began the process. His mind left him, it vaulted the gap, took to the diastolic channels, began the journey. But something happened. Something happened and I cannot say what…I cannot say where he went…”. The book takes place at least a thousand years in the future and this is a description of a technical failure?
I realize Kingsnorth was not trying to write science fiction, and pseudo-techno blather about flux capacitor polarity would be disruptive, but therein lies part of the novel’s problem.
The interesting part is the story’s unalloyed condemnation of Gnosticism. The idea that material existence is fundamentally flawed, or evil is as bogus today as it was in the first century, and the primitives in Alexandria make that eloquently clear. Sadly, the equally bogus heresy of Pantheism is held up as a worthy creed for its replacement.
February 21, 2021
I am not sure I’m going to manage to adequately summarise this book or sum up my feelings about it, but I shall give it a go! Alexandria is a work of eco-fiction, set about a millennium in the future, well after the height of the human civilisation. At this peak (now), the human impact on the earth had taken a massive toll, but humans had also become capable of understanding AI to such a degree that they could create a mind capable of building a virtual city, Alexandria, to house ascended humans so that they could live forever without bodies. Most humans escaped from the hunger and rapidly worsening climate into Alexandria, and the rest of them who don’t believe in Alexandria as a choice now live in tribes, following The Way, trying to live in harmony with nature and animals, revering birds as messengers of The Lady. Language has devolved, so it’s similar to reading the furthest future in Cloud Atlas - some words are written in a new phonetic spelling, or some come from old Anglo-Saxon (and Britain is Albion; we are Atlanteans). It’s not always easy to understand but the story is intriguing and the people of the tribe have a deep and immense understanding of nature which they pass down which is in its way immensely more wise than those who believe in the AI. The tribe are dwindling in number because of the Stalker, who comes to tempt them to join the ascended minds in Alexandria, but the remaining members of the tribe are trying to keep faith in an ancient prophecy, that when swans return, Alexandria will fall. I enjoyed reading this and it’s one I am sure I will keep thinking about, as at its heart this is asking deep questions about the way we live now and how we can live better, or if we are even capable of it.
My thanks to #NetGalley and the publisher Faber and Faber, for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
My thanks to #NetGalley and the publisher Faber and Faber, for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
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July 24, 2021Alexandria completes Kingsnorth’s trilogy that began 1,000 years in the past with the stunning The Wake. We are now 1,000 years in a post-apocalyptic future. And, as in first two books, something is coming. There are other echoes of the earlier books, notably the name Wayland. In The Wake, Wayland was a an ancestor-deity. In Alexandria, he is a world-spanning artificial intelligence, seen as a mortal threat by the remnants of humanity. Such echoes might be read as an attempt to forge links of deeper meaning. But they might as easily be seen as literary tricks. Only weighing the themes of this final book would allow a judgement between these two alternatives.
And, here, I felt shortchanged. The writing is, as in the other books, inventive. And the story has enough elements to keep you reading: the doomed love affair, the wild child, the wise but troubled elders, the threat from beyond, and the final trek. But the deep themes are well-trodden ground: the opposition between human and machine, between body and mind; the Gaia hypothesis that the planet is a single living being. And, in pursuit of this theme, Kingsnorth indulges himself in that greatest sin of sci-fi writing, the info-dump.
As with the earlier books, the nature writing is captivating. There is no doubt that Kingsnorth loves nature. But, I couldn’t help but fear that this love hides a darker message: wouldn’t it all be lovelier if there were no people. This is probably an unfair accusation, since this is precisely the theme he explores in the middle book, Beast. Here we are in a landscape shorn of all but one human. And it is a frightening landscape of madness and obsession. Yet, I still felt echoes in Alexandria of an easy essentialist back-to-nature kind of environmentalism.
And, here, I felt shortchanged. The writing is, as in the other books, inventive. And the story has enough elements to keep you reading: the doomed love affair, the wild child, the wise but troubled elders, the threat from beyond, and the final trek. But the deep themes are well-trodden ground: the opposition between human and machine, between body and mind; the Gaia hypothesis that the planet is a single living being. And, in pursuit of this theme, Kingsnorth indulges himself in that greatest sin of sci-fi writing, the info-dump.
As with the earlier books, the nature writing is captivating. There is no doubt that Kingsnorth loves nature. But, I couldn’t help but fear that this love hides a darker message: wouldn’t it all be lovelier if there were no people. This is probably an unfair accusation, since this is precisely the theme he explores in the middle book, Beast. Here we are in a landscape shorn of all but one human. And it is a frightening landscape of madness and obsession. Yet, I still felt echoes in Alexandria of an easy essentialist back-to-nature kind of environmentalism.
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