Nothing Is Promised is a series consisting of four books. When You Had Power is the first one. Both the blurb and the cover below represent the book.
Blurb
For better, for worse. In sickness and in health.
It’s a legal vow of care for families in 2050, a world beset by waves of climate-driven plagues.
Power engineer Lucía Ramirez long ago lost her family to one—she’d give anything to take that vow. The Power Islands give humanity a fighting chance, but tending kelp farms and solar lilies is a lonely job. The housing AI found her a family match, saying she should fit right in with the Senegalese retraining expert who’s a force of nature, the ex-Pandemic Corps cook with his own cozy channel, and even the writer who insists everything is stories, all the way down. This family of literal and metaphorical refugees could be the shelter she’s seeking from her own personal storm.
She needs this one to work.
Then an unscheduled power outage and a missing turtle-bot crack open a mystery. Something isn’t right on Power Island One, but every step she takes to solve it, someone else gets there first—and they’re determined to make her unsee what she’s seen. Lucía is an engineer, not a detective, but fixing this problem might cost her the one thing she truly needs: a home.
When You Had Power is the first of four tightly-connected hopepunk novels in a near-future climate-fiction series. It’s about our future, how society will shift and flex like a solar lily in the storms of our own making, and how breaks in the social fabric have to be expected, tended to, and healed. Because we’re in this together, now more than ever before.
If you enjoyed the optimistic climate solutions in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future or the cozy cooperative future in Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot series, you will enjoy Nothing is Promised.
The book cover below includes alt-text.
I have a problem. I love the idea of solarpunk, but I've never found a solarpunk book that really worked for me. Okay, I enjoyed The Dispossessed, which I think can be categorized as solarpunk, but the rest of the stories left me lukewarm.
But Nothing Is Promised finally changed that. I got hooked from the first pages and couldn't put those books down until I finished the series.
What I loved about it
- Great character development — these characters are flawed and real. They have room for growth, difficult choices to make, and I loved all of them.
- A world full of challenges that I could believe was real. The future the author painted seemed so realistic, and had a great mix of hardship and hope. It's equal part terrifying and wonderful, as humanity grapples with the effects of climate change and finally finds its way to cooperation and creating solutions.
- Tight storytelling — these books are short, and I generally prefer longer ones, but the author managed to develop every aspect of the story in such an efficient way, that I only wished those books were longer because I enjoyed them so much. However, nothing was missing. I loved Susan Kaye Quinn's style, and I think she's a great storyteller.
Every book features a new protagonist, which could have been a flaw, but worked well for the story as it progressed. Even though there seemingly wasn't that much time for character development, each of them felt like a real person, and I immediately started caring about them and emphasizing with their struggles.
On the one hand, it's a world that I want to live in. A world where actual leaders who care and are ready to do the work are in positions of power. Where people live in tightly-knit communities that rely on each other, and no one is truly alone. Where humanity has collective power to change things for the better. It's such a beautiful vision that it made me cry in the end.
On the other hand, this world is far from utopia, which I really appreciate. It's a harsh world ravaged by incessant pandemics, power outages, heat waves, fires and other horrifying effects of climate change. Everyone has lost someone. No one can be sure about the future. They don't have it under control yet, and it still can go either way. But, damn it, they are doing what they can. There is no apathy, no hopelessness, no indifference that are so common today. And I'm afraid that I'm going to see the worst of this world within my lifetime without seeing the best of it.
Here is where the message of the book shines: nothing is promised and nothing is set in stone. It can go either way, and it depends on each of us doing our part, no matter how big or small. We'll all be in a position where we are the right person to do the right thing, and it's not going to be easy or convenient, but we should take the chance and do our part while relying on our community.
I believe that we need stories like this. Stories that give us hope and inspire to act. Stories that show that we have a future worth fighting for.
When the time comes, and it's your time to do the right thing — embrace it, and I'll do my part. Maybe, just maybe, we have a chance.
The first book When You Had Power is free. You can get it at Kobo, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Amazon and other bookstores.
The author
Susan Kaye Quinn is a rocket scientist turned speculative fiction author who now uses her PhD to invent cool stuff in books. Her works range from young adult science fiction to adult future-noir, with side trips into royal fantasy romance and middle grade. Her bestselling novels and short stories have been optioned for Virtual Reality, translated into German and French, and featured in several anthologies.
She writes full-time from Chicago, inventing mind powers and dreaming of the Singularity.
Find her on her website, Facebook, Mastodon, Instagram, and Tiktok.
Featured image by ArtMethodLab.