(courtesy Harper Collins Australia)
How far would you go to protect something you truly and deeply love?
It’s an academic question for most of us, but for Ben, the protagonist of Bradley Somer’s Extinction, it’s a real and pressing question that could him relationships, friendships, any sense of wellbeing left to him and in the end, his life.
He lives in a near-future where the Earth is so degraded and ravaged by remorselessly greedy people that humanity is fleeing to the stars, to the “deep colonies” as they’re termed, running from a world where nature is in such retreat that there remains only one bear left in existence.
That bear lives in the woods deep in the mountains where Ben patrols, part of a last ditch attempt to safeguard the little that is left of a magnificent species who simply can’t survive in a world that treats it as a resource to be exploited, a resource to be hunted and nothing else.
Ben, and those in his team including Emma with whom he is very close – though they rarely see each other due to the ranges they patrol, she is his touchstone, an emotional anchor and sanity check in a job that demands everything from those who take it on – feel very differently of course, and they work ceaselessly, even as the clock ticks down, to keep what little remains of the natural world intact.
There’s movement in the forest.
Ben holds his rifle at the ready and twists to see a figure approaching, weapon also raised, and close.
‘Ben,’ the man says. ‘Relax.’
An already exacting task is more all the more difficult when he comes across poachers, amoral people including a father and son who have decided that before they slip the bonds of Earth and head to its new home in the stars that they will hunt the last bear in existence.
It’s a morally reprehensible act which triggers a fervent sense of trenchant disbelief in you as a reader – how, when so little is left, can you callously destroy it simply for some sort of sick, twisted “goodbye Earth” stunt?
At first, Ben is tempted to simply cut and run, leave the bear, whom he cares for deeply and which is known as “the Boss” behind to its inevitable fate, but he simply can’t do that after urging from Poppy, an old woman who lives in the woods, who says he can’t simply give up the fight when he has already committed so much to it, heart and soul.
He’s terrified, as any of us would be, a university student who’s had rudimentary survival and gun training and who feels ill equipped to go up against the well guided and equipped poachers he’s facing.
He has to ask himself – what matters more? Preserving his own hide while he loses everything he values or fighting for what he loves and hoping he survives to enjoy the sacrificial fruits of his labour?
As intense existential dilemmas go, it’s a doozy and it’s Ben’s sorting out of what matters most that injects so much heartfelt humanity into brilliantly and breathlessly heartfelt and imaginative book.
(courtesy official author site / Photo credit: Phil Crozier)
Extinction asks us to consider what we might do in the same situation.
In a world that is increasingly asking us to stand up and be counted or complicit with great evil, either fascistic or environmental, we have to decide whether simply staying safe is enough or if we need to stand for something far greater and bigger than ourselves.
That very pressing issue is real for Ben who is on a planet groaning on its last living legs; he could drive away, abandon “the Boss” and hope to fashion a life, as Poppy has done, on what little remains of a planet ravaged by ecological blight of the most catastrophic kind.
But then what exactly is he living for?
It’s a lot to grapple with but Extinction doesn’t let Ben off the hook, nor us by extension, and the propulsive story, which races across landscapes and hearts, deep into valleys and souls, never lets go, no matter how action oriented it gets, of this central, overarching question.
Somers finds a way to expertly deliver a story which is blockbuster big in its ambition, scope and execution, but which goes intimately into the very minutiae of humanity in every moment, every gunshot traded and barbed conversation held.
It’s rare to find a novel this epically big and yet emotionally intimate, and what enraptures you about Extinction is how brilliantly it keeps the heart and soul evident in even the most violent and adrenaline pounding of moments.
Ben’s body moves automatically, feeling like it’s skimming above the ground’s surface and his consciousness is merely an observer of muscle and bone. He weaves between tree trunks, like liquid, barely disturbing the branches. The snaking root mat can’t trip him up and the uneven terrain doesn’t need his eyes. He is distilled into movement with animal purpose.
The end of the world is a bleak proposition at the best of times, but what really makes Extinction pop too is how Ben, though put through the ringer and ground down to within a literal and figurative inch of his life, finds meaning and some small measure of hope when everything, including murderously narcissistic poachers, says there is none.
It’s no euphoric, Hollywood ending epiphany by any means and in much of Extinction it’s doubtful anything of any value will emerge from the mess of devotion and love coming hard up against utilitarian thoughtlessness and senseless cruelty, but somehow something does and it’s the ability to wrangle some meaning and hope out of the end of the world hellishness that stamps the novel as something truly special.
It’s all too easy to watch the world descend into murderous messiness and wonder if you can do anything, and even if you could, whether you would be brave enough to follow through.
It’s not an easy question and certainly doesn’t come with any kind of easy answer, and it’s that truth that makes Extinction such an arresting, moving and deeply thoughtful read that never lets you off the hook and which asks without ceasing what you do if you were all that stood between great evil and something you truly loved.
You may not even know how you would react by the end of Extinction but you will be well and truly pressed to think about it, and think hard, in a story with the world on its shoulders, a gun in its hands and the mother of all decisions to make.