Review: Flood by Stephen Baxter

Blurb:

It begins in 2016. Another wet summer, another year of storm surges and high tides. But this time the Thames Barrier is breached and central London is swamped. The waters recede, life goes on, the economy begins to recover, people watch the news reports of other floods around the world. And then the waters rise again. And again.

Lily, Helen, Gary and Piers, hostages released from five years captivity at the hands of Christian Extremists in Spain, return to England and the first rumours of a flood of positively Biblical proportions…

Sea levels have begun to rise, at catastrophic speed. Within two years London and New York will be under water. The Pope will give his last address from the Vatican before Rome is swallowed by the rising water. Mecca too will vanish beneath the waves.

The world is drowning. A desperate race to find out what is happening begins. The popular theory is that we are paying the price for our profligacy and that climate change is about to redress Gaia’s balance. But there are dissenting views. And all the time the waters continue to rise and mankind begins the great retreat to higher ground. Millions will die, billions will become migrants. Wars will be fought over mountains.

Review:

I first found “Flood” by Stephen Baxter sitting around in an online library that my local library has back when I was a wee lad of thirteen or fourteen years old. Since then, I fail to recollect the amount of times I’ve read through this as a comfort read, yet I can say that it still keeps the same suspense it has over time. And all the while, it is still so surreal to read through this and watch a mirror world of our society drown due to the environment, due to collapsing economies, and due to each other. 

“Six captives, five saved. Just in time to witness the beginning of the flood. Take a dive into their journeys and get swept away by the known unknowns.” - This is what I’ll go with if I had to convince someone to read this book. But those three sentences, those three sentences, two of which being information and another inviting you to read the book, do not do the full tale justice nor do they give you enough of a warning for how surreal and almost realistic this book gets. 

Now that I’ve said that, let me go into why I’ve that neither the blurb above nor my own descriptions thus far truly capture the scope or absurdity of it. It took me a bit longer to read through this book since Baxter didn’t hold back with the good moments, nor the bad, and all of them blend together into a tale far more complex than I thought possible when I first read “Flood” three or four years ago and only recently have become more aware of how realistically surreal this book truly is. 

First of all, the beginning of “Flood”. Is it a start that feels different? Yes. Is there a reason behind such a start to the book? More than likely, yes. Do we know exactly what chaos we’re about to get thrown into? Not at all. This is why the introduction to this book works well if you sit back and ponder the role Lily, Helen, Gary and Piers play. Not only are they traumatised individuals trying to cope with a world that has changed immensely since their capture. No, they aren't just that. In a way, they are our eyes, ears and senses with this earth, this iteration of “What if Earth had X happen to it”. Everything they see is new.  Which means we get to experience it all as something new as well. Sure, there are a few other perspectives bouncing in here and there, but the main four perspectives are that of Lily, Helen, Grey and Pierce.

Now, to the way this book flows through time. If this book stayed within 2016, it would be only a snippet of the true magnitude of happenings. As it so turns out, this book is split into five parts spanning several decades and a lot of change, with four mainstays as the perspectives. Is this jarring, jumping between years every once and a while? Yes, it is. But is it done poorly? No, since we’re told which year it is each chapter, we can roughly keep track of the timeline within this speculative fiction. And all the while, there’s math running in the background of “Flood” making sure that if you were to do the calculations of what’s casually said without bold underlines throughout this book, you can tell that it makes sense where things are when you’re in that year. 

As for technology, this book was written about 16 years ago, so phones and computers are dated to that time period with a few devices being a bit more futuristic to a point of being even ahead of what we now have in 2024. All the while, what tech we are told of and given in this book shows how innovative we humans can get if a crisis were to happen and there was no choice but to adapt. 

Then, the cast of “Flood” is, while seemingly thrown together at random, well thought and planned in how they act throughout this mirror world of ours and the upheaval caused therein by a shift of geography. We have Lily, who alongside Piers, living with those rich enough that they are barely affected by the changes while also only two of four display pieces for a rich person to display as something he’s done to benefit the world. And then we have Helen, searching the world for her lost child, experiencing the shifts of society first hand. Lastly, there’s Gary. Gary’s the scientist of the group and he explores the world scientifically so that others (and us) can get a true scope of what Earth is going through. 

All of them have their flaws, none of them are perfect. And all of them have some lasting trauma from being held hostages. There are a few other people throughout the book with whom we get to spend time with from their perspectives and they all feel real in some way or another, but most of the time is spent with the four hostages. 

After that, we have the speculative science behind it, that not only sets the tone but also tosses in a theory of what could happen to the earth should an upper mantle lake leak. And considering this book is Baxters interpretation of what James Lovelocks “Gaia Hypothesis” (which goes along the lines of Earth balancing itself in order to get back to a stable state) while also backing other aspects with papers that he found and read. 

As for things that weren’t as enjoyable, I’d say that some parts of the book could have had more detail, with more yearly happenings could have been placed in. As it was when reading “Flood”, the information dumps every chapter over the passing years does get tiring, but at the same time, it helps keep the book at the pace it goes about.

Another aspect to consider would be the dated feel of the book. This book was written in 2009. And bygone years appear as the future in this book. It’s speculative fiction dealing with dates, and considering those dates have passed by with nothing happening in terms of the book, it feels surreal and unnatural, and a bit jarring to read. Though that’s just a minor annoyance that might bother some more than others.

All in all, if you want to read a surreal and terrifying prediction of disaster that could happen, I’d hand you this book and tell you that it’s the perfect book to read on a sunny, upbeat day with no rain in sight and the one book that should never be read with storm warnings about.

As always, if you’ve gotten to this part of the review, thank you for reading it and I hope I’ve helped you along finding your next read. If not, do not fret, we have more reviews here on SFF Insiders to help you along your way to your next read, be it reviews of fantasy, science fiction, romance or horror. 

Wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening or goodnight!