The Light Pirate

This riveting story takes place in near future Florida as rising water levels and crumbling infrastructure have made the state nearly uninhabitable. But Wanda, a remarkable child named after a powerful hurricane of the same name, chooses to stay and battle the elements.

I happened to read this terrifying, beautifully written novel while on vacation in Hollywood, Florida, making the dystopian future landscape terrifyingly real and easy to imagine.

The writing is gorgeous, and the author’s commentary on climate change is sobering: a true masterpiece for our time. 

I've resisted ‘cli-fi’ novels thinking I didn’t want or need more post-apocalyptic doom and gloom in my head.

Finally, after feeling like I was missing out on an important cultural moment, I asked a friend who reads in this genre, and he suggested I start with Lilly Brooks-Dalton’s novel.

Set in an undefined near future, The Light Pirate is more realist than fantasy or sci-fi, but the author makes clever use of an unexplainable, possibly supernatural element to set up the novel’s central question: Are humans going to adapt to climate change or will we die off as a species?… show more.