The Hope by Paul Hardisty #BookReview @Hardisty_Paul @OrendaBooks #ClimateEmergency #ForcingTrilogy

 

The year is 2082. Climate collapse, famine and war have left the world in ruins. In the shadow of the Alpha-Omega regime – descendants of the super-rich architects of disaster – sixteen-year-old Boo Ashworth and her uncle risk everything to save what’s left of human knowledge, hiding the last surviving books in a secret library beneath the streets of Hobart.

But Boo has a secret of her own: an astonishing ability to memorise entire texts with perfect recall. When the library is discovered and destroyed, she’s forced to flee – armed with nothing but the stories she carries in her mind, and a growing understanding of her family’s true past. 

Hunted and alone, and with the help of some unlikely allies, she must fight to save her loved ones – and bring hope to a broken world.

Spanning three generations before, during and after the fall, The Hope is the shattering conclusion to Paul E. Hardisty’s critically acclaimed climate-emergency trilogy – a devastating, visionary thriller that dares to imagine the possibility of redemption in the face of near-total collapse. In a dying world, it asks the most urgent question of all: what if there’s still time?

The Hope by Paul E Hardisty is published today; 29 January 2026 by Orenda Books and is volume three in The Forcing Trilogy. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this Blog Tour

The two previous books in this trilogy; The Forcing and The Descent are two of my favourite books, and I've been really excited and looking forward to reading the conclusion.

There are books that entertain, books that unsettle, and then there are books that quietly take hold of you and refuse to let go. The Hope by Paul E. Hardisty is firmly in that last category. This is not just the conclusion of The Forcing trilogy; it is a powerful, unsettling and compassionate piece of storytelling that lingers long after the final page is turned.

Set in 2082, The Hope introduces a world that has paid the ultimate price for decades of greed, denial and wilful inaction. Climate collapse has reshaped everything: politics, power, morality and survival itself. The author does not gently ease his readers into this future. Instead, he places us directly inside it, where the remnants of humanity exist under the control of the Alpha-Omega regime; descendants of the very people who profited while the planet burned. It is grim, but it is also painfully believable, and that is what makes this novel so great.

At the heart of the story is Boo Ashworth, a teenager whose courage and resilience are remarkable without ever feeling implausible. Boo possesses an extraordinary gift, she ca memorise entire books with perfect recall. The author never treats this as a gimmick. Instead, it becomes a deeply symbolic act of resistance. In a world where knowledge is dangerous, outlawed and erased, Boo becomes a living archive, a keeper of stories, ideas and memory itself. The author understands the power of the written word so well. 

This is a novel that spans generations, moving perfectly between past and present.  The author invites the reader to consider not just what has been lost, but how it was lost, and, importantly, who benefited along the way. His background as an environmental scientist is evident, but never heavy-handed. The science is embedded seamlessly into the narrative, giving the story authority and weight without ever overwhelming the human drama at its core.

This book packs such an emotional punch. There is anger, and sorrow, and moments of genuine fear, but there is also tenderness and an unexpected sense of hope. The author's prose is often lyrical, almost poetic, even when describing the harshest realities. He has an uncanny ability to balance beauty and brutality, ensuring that the novel never slips into despair for despair’s sake.

Tension runs through every page. The sense of threat is constant, and yet the novel never becomes exhausting. Instead, you are compelled onwards, by the need to see whether resistance, memory and compassion can still matter in a world that seems determined to crush them. This is dystopian fiction at its most effective: not spectacle, but warning.

While The Hope does work as a standalone novel, it gains enormous power when read as the culmination of the trilogy. Threads laid down in earlier books come together with precision and purpose. However, the author is careful not to alienate new readers; enough context is provided to make this story accessible to all readers.

Ultimately, The Hope asks a question that feels uncomfortably urgent: what if there is still time? It does not offer easy answers, but it does suggest that resistance can take many forms; knowledge, memory, kindness, and the refusal to forget. This is a sobering, thought-provoking and deeply affecting novel, and a fitting, unforgettable conclusion to a remarkable trilogy.

Highly recommended, and not easily forgotten.

Canadian Paul Hardisty has spent twenty-five years working all over the world as an
environmental scientist and freelance journalist. 

He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. 

He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a in 1993, and was one of the last Westerners out of Yemen at the outbreak of the 1994 civil war. 

In 2022 he criss-crossed Ukraine reporting on the Russian invasion. 

His debut thriller The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and was a Telegraph Thriller of the Year, and The Forcing (2023) and The Descent (2024) were a SciFi Now Book of the Month and shortlisted for the Crime Fiction Lover Awards. 

Paul is a keen outdoorsman, a conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.

X @Hardisty_paul

Instagram @paulhardisty

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