The Deluge

By: Stephen Markley

Narrated by: Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Gibson Frazier, Stephen Graybill, Soneela Nankani, Joy Osmanski, Melissa Redmond, Aida Reluzco, André Santana, Neil Shah, Aven Shore, Shakira Shute, Pete Simonelli, Shaun Taylor-Corbett

Length: 40 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

A New York Times Notable Book
“This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.” —Stephen King

From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.

In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.

From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.

©2022 Stephen Markley. All rights reserved. (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved

S King said it best - prophetic and terrifying

4.35 stars
I sometimes get scared off by books over 40 hours in length and I don’t often take heed on the quote on the cover from another author/newspaper/etc. But this book was different. Stephen King’s quote on the book cover was very spot on:
This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.

I would partially agree on the uplifting part of it and fully agree on the prophetic and terrifying aspects to go a little further of downright disturbing. This book is so realistic that I feel like it’s happening, and these people are real people. And I keep thinking about it… unfortunately…

To put it simply, this author built a backstory of a collection of characters that started 10 years ago from current day. He then took all the current nature-based crises and all the predicted crises and amplified those by tenfold or so and then told the story as if we were all living it in real time. Global warming is out of control (planes can’t even operate in Phoenix because it’s too hot), forest fires happen so quick and burn so hot that they melt everything in their path like lava, hurricanes are so huge that they span from island country to island country, wiping out and displacing millions of people, and American politics is out of control (not a far cry from today).

There are some very interesting ideas brought up in this book to where I wonder where we blur the lines of science fiction to going-to-become-reality. Just wait until you get to the actual Deluge. That was an intense sequence of events that raised my heartrate significantly.

One of my complaints about the book is that when we go from chapter to chapter, changing points-of-view, it is not always clear on who the next POV is. I think this was the intention but for reading comprehension, it would have been better if this was announced at the beginning of the chapter (or at least early on). This book does great at staying linear (for the most part) in the timeline and makes sure the reader knows where we are in time. There are a ton of characters but there is enough ‘review’ to know who is who (and some characters can be forgotten – I think).

Audiobook narrator [Full Cast] rating: 4.3 stars
I thought the narration was great and it was fun having a mostly full cast audio production. I am not sure what the complaint was from other reviews on Audible about this (saying it sounded like it was recorded on a headset). The speaking was clear to me. The Audible phone app still really sucks. I wish they would improve it to make it useful, or at least somewhat compatible with other audiobook apps. It’s too bad we can’t listen to these Audible books on a different app that works appropriately.

If you read one book this year, read or listen to this

Yes, this is a very long book and worth every sentence. For the first 20 hours I actually made myself notes to keep track of the characters. During the time that I was listening to this book, I was stunned, and a bit frightened by how often scenarios that were being presented as near future fiction in the book were actually playing out in our present. The author and the very capable readers did an extraordinary job of demonstrating the intricate complications of climate, change, politics, economic, disparity, migration, and disease. Get this book, read it, or listen to it, and talk to others!

if you read only one book, make it this.

Everyone on the planet should read/listen to, this. Especially Americans. My son recommended it and it was well worth the time invested.

Incredible work!!

Narration was spot on for this incredible work of literature! This is a must read!

Yep. That’s probably how it’s going to go down.

No punches pulled. Disney won’t be buying the film rights. I’ll be sending this book to some of my friends, but not all. Pros: incredibly detailed and realistic look at how the dominos will like fall as a result of climate change in an over populated, politically polarized and highly intertwined world. It also shows how the battle between corporate greed, and believers if all stripes will play out as the s$&t hits the fan. A few really interesting characters.
Cons: a bit too much gore to make a point or two. Too many characters. Monologues can be way too long.

Epic prescient eco thriller

40 hours, and worth every moment. listened on 1x speed to enjoy the voices and let every word in. It’s a masterpiece. sure to be picked up for video production… I only hope it gets a budget and director truly worthy of the work, and a long run time… episododic and grand. The World needs to read this book.

A wakeup call for everyone!!!

Loved the powerful stories of each flawed character along with the realistic background of our evolving society and natural world. Excellent audio performances!

brilliant and haunting

This is an ambitious and well executed novel. The writing, the story, the character development, the dialogue... all of it fits together so well. It's uncanny just how well this story was crafted. Sometimes a story is good but the writing is kinda meh. Sometimes the writing is excellent, but the story doesn't exactly shine. The Deluge is brilliant, relevant, timely, prophetic, well researched, accessible, entertaining, insightful, informative, funny, devastating, hopeful, and gut-wrenchingly terrifying.

This is an monumental story addressing the biggest threat to humanity... ever - the climate crisis. Those complaining about the length or the editing or the polyphony of voices, well... they seem more than just a little spoiled to me. This is an ambitious project, so for it to cover all it has to with any depth - it has to be long, there have to be multiple characters, and it might actually require a little something from you. That the author could keep all the balls in the air, and juggle them so successfully, is an admirable feat. If you merely want to be spoonfed entertainment then this might not be the novel you're looking for. That being said, though - I found it to be a highly entertaining read, as well. It drew me right in. I couldn't stop listening, and am now listening to it again.

I usually hate books with too many characters. Too many characters and I start to lose track. To be honest - I did kinda space out on who some of the character's were from time to time, but it almost didn't matter - the story swept along and kept me captivated anyway. Eventually, though, (despite my scatterbrain) the character's identities pulled back together and reconnected for me.

The narration (and I'm a snob about narration) was great, as well.

Intense

Many people have called The Deluge “woke”. Let’s address this. There are brief sections where characters talk in language regarding privilege, white, male, white male, etc. To me it was at times annoying. But this was characters in a book speaking this and maybe ten or twenty pages out of 900 are about these subjects. I don’t know if the author feels similarly but really, a small fraction of the book is distasteful and that’s a reason to DNF it? Who’s the snowflake?

As for The Deluge, for me it was stunning and intense. The characters were well drawn out and have excellent story arcs. The speculative scientific events were usually credible and create a daunting world with heart racing plot points that are heartbreaking.

The political and billionaire class are portrayed as the villains, blocking progress for the minimal power they hold, thinking of themselves and what is in it for them. Is it real? I don’t know any billionaires but do know millionaire and from personal experience I’d say the portrait is about 75% accurate. The same applies to politicians. There are some sincere ones as the book demonstrates but whether they’re mostly obnoxious as The Deluge’s is mostly accurate.

The confluence of weather events, a truly horrible TV preacher who seems to be anything but a religious leader, and people throughout the spectrum of decency feel right. I hate that this is lumped together with the ‘dystopian fiction’ label. At its most basic it is but let’be clear, it is literary fiction and, there is some need to understand climate science which is discussed simply and seems to have plausible scenarios.

The writing is excellent with a good plot.The novel takes its time ramping up.

As in life there are characters that won’t be likeable. There is a lot of meat to the book. If you expect a thriller you might not get what you expected although there are thriller elements to be found. It isn’t a fast read. There’s a lot going on and the book takes some time getting there. That said I liked it although there were times I had to take a break as many intense things happen as the book’s action ramps up.

If you hate the ‘snowflake’ aspect just calm down. It isn’t that huge an investment and try to remember you probably know people like that. It’s a small amount of the book. Quitting because you are so fed up with that says as much about you as your dislike for what a couple characters -briefly- discuss.

Well worth reading.

Long, naive, often boring

I did manage to finish this on audible, but I listened to the vast majority of it on either 1.5 or two times speed. The first 10 chapters are all character development with almost nothing happening related to climate. I almost gave up during this extremely tedious section of the book.

Eventually, the climate crisis starts to happen, and the author gives his version of how the science and politics of a climate crisis might unfold. it depicts how the familiar strands of American political culture might respond. This includes comic-book depictions of right wing Christian fascists, left wing ecoterrorists, wonky do-gooders, venal politicians, greedy business people, troubled but innocent working class people, etc.

It is often almost unbearably naive in its wokeness or progressiveness. Long passages read like position papers from progressive think tanks. It’s vision of eco-Utopia is like some Bernie Sanders-AOC wet dream. It lays bare a tendency that many accuse the climate activists of: that they don’t just want action on climate. They want a radical remaking of the social order in ways that have nothing to do with climate.

And yet it was oddly compelling at times. I wanted to see how he depicted the superstorms, droughts, fires, floods, etc. And I did find myself caring about a few of the characters, though many of them are laughable caricatures. It even brought me to tears a couple of times, but I’m a sucker for melodrama.

As many other reviewers have noted, the book is narrated by a large cast. This is extremely annoying, especially early on when you don’t know who’s who. The book would have been better with only one narrator, but I’m certain the use of many narrators was the author’s bow to some misplaced DEI impulse.

There are some shockingly bad mispronunciations of place names and Latin words that even cursory quality control should have caught and fixed, but I bet even the editors were too bored by its length to edit it carefully.

Overall the book will be of interest to folks who like post-apocalyptic climate fiction.

It is at least 50% too long and could have benefitted from much more aggressive editing.

Read at your own risk.