Timberdark by Darren Charlton

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It is a great pleasure to find that Charlton successfully lives up to the massive expectations he created with Wranglestone. The characters, the sense of place, and the drama are all as strong as ever.

You have such care for Peter and Cooper as they wrestle with the challenges of love I found myself aching with the desire to see things come right for them – this is the core captivating drive of the novel. That love and loss seem ever intertwined is hard.

This is a more explicitly political story – it clearly questions whether the return to “normal” after the period of exile in the wilderness is desirable, with the suggestion that the stupefying nature of consumer culture might have been the real cause of the first collapse of society. To read this in the midst of our “post-Covid” return to normal back this a timely challenge. But is a turning of your back on 21^st Century life really the only cure – this is a dark conclusion.