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Thank you to Viking/Penguin and NetGalley for the ARC of the novel.

Earlier this year I read Golden Days by Carolyn See, a novel that in part imagines life in a post-nuclear war southern California. The world See describes before the nuclear annihilation is one of Los Angeles glamour, parties at mansions, the accumulation of wealth, while in the air there is the distinct scent of doom. It is never addressed directly, but there are references to tensions in the political sphere, chest-thumping politicians, whispers that grow louder of a nuclear threat. Would they really do it? But life goes on (what else can one do?), until it suddenly doesn't. The final section of Golden Days is the aftermath of the nuclear battle written with great detail and attention to the devastation on the environment and the human survivors. Eventually those survivors make their way to the California coast, where they join other survivors on a beach where the sand has melted into glass. And these survivors start to build community again.

I thought of See's novel when I finished The Ancients. John Larison has written a novel that is an acclamation of the human spirit, a celebration of the human will to live, and a reminder that humans thrive in community. In The Ancients, the existential threat is environmental made worse by the dominant civilization's refusal to change and adapt to the new reality. Instead of moderating their wants into needs, the empire seeks to extract more resources from a dwindling supply, causing devastating suffering for the many people not wealthy enough to purchase even the basics to sustain themselves. The leaders of this empire continue on this path of destruction because they have created an exit plan for themselves, a means of survival that does not have room for everyone.

Of course, there are echoes here of today's world with climate change and its potentially devastating effects along with the stories of the super-rich building their bunkers and spaceships in order to survive. They have their escape plans ready to go. The world of The Ancients is the world we are creating (destroying?) now, generations into the future. It is a world where humans are once again hunters and gatherers, living symbiotically with their environment, appreciating what nature provides without wasting the resources. Yet those humans who live in concert with nature suffer the consequences created by those who don't, those who seek material wealth above all else. And the cycle begins again. But Larison's novel is ultimately hopeful, seeing in humans the potential to survive, to come together and live together as community. There is an appeal in the novel, I think, quiet, yet insistent, that maybe it is time to try a matriarchal approach to civilization. Larison's female characters are as strong as men, as fierce, yet ultimately the wiser, the ones gifted with the "longer view."

The Ancients is a fast, entertaining novel. Larison jumps right into the narrative, and readers are pulled along for a great story with characters that move you. What begins as three separate narratives get funneled into a cohesive final whole that is satisfying and rich. In some parts almost Biblical, in other parts violent, and in other parts tender, The Ancients is a novel that is compelling in its writing and its vision.