Barbara

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Barbara is Currently Reading

Barbara is currently reading

Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It

by Oliver Burkeman

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Jan 21, 2026 02:35PM

Barbara rated a book really liked it

The Descent: The shocking, visionary climate-emergency thriller – prequel to the critically acclaimed THE FORCING

by Paul E. Hardisty (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, 2026, dystopia, fiction, series

Reading for the 2nd time

read in January 2026

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Barbara said: " This book describes itself as a prequel to The Forcing.

Actually, that's not the whole story. It's both a prequel AND a sequel to a story that you don't really need to have read in order to 'get' The Descent.

Even more unusually, it's actually a pre/se This book describes itself as a prequel to The Forcing.

Actually, that's not the whole story. It's both a prequel AND a sequel to a story that you don't really need to have read in order to 'get' The Descent.

Even more unusually, it's actually a pre/sequel that - in my opinion - is a lot better than the first book.

I read The Forcing a few years ago and I really didn't 'get' it. There were holes you could sail supertankers through, a lot of references to old folk getting what they deserved, and a lot of blaming going on. Totally unbelievable things happened all the time.

In The Descent, weird and hard to believe stuff happens again (mostly, I found it hard to believe that you could lose a child and just happen to rock up to the one place in the world where she would just happen to be) but I had already suspended disbelief and found it easier to accept this time around.

The Forcing had a dual time narrative that annoyed me. The Descent did the same but it wasn't as jarring this time around.

The story is told in two voices - the young man whose parents were the protagonists of the first book goes off in search of answers about what happened to his parents before and after his birth. He's broadcasting his father's 'book' over the radio, hoping somebody out 'there' will make some sense of it. At the same time, a woman - who we come to know as 'Sparkplug' - is telling her own story about working for one of the super-wealthy men who caused the destruction of the world that they know a few decades from now.

Perhaps the big difference between the two books is the reelection of Donald Trump and the influence of Elon Musk, thinly dressed up as President Bragg and Gazillionaire Argent. Far too much of the plot seems entirely believable coming from those two.

How far would the men who crave power and money go to get control of both for themselves? Hopefully not quite as far as the baddies in The Descent, but the signs suggest this could be a template for a global pandemic to end the population boom. ...more "

Jan 05, 2026 08:33AM · see review