Climate Change is everywhere and cannot be ignored. Wide fires rage, floods wipeout villages,
topsoil and lives, and the oceans are dying.
Theo knows this well as his father’s fishing boat struggles to catch enough to survive let alone flourish as his grandfather and great grandfather before them. When they hit an unmarked wellhead platform belonging to a nearby oil rig, their fishing boat sinks in minutes as they scramble for the lifeboats. Theo can’t imagine what they will do now as his family only just scrapes by as it is. His worries multiply when his father nearly dies – the only thing saving him being a strange seaweed like tendril shooting from Theo’s hand to save his father.
He’s not the only one freaking out about this weird phenomenon taking over his body. Hester is the daughter of the owner of the oilrig and plans to run her father’s billion dollar company herself one day. Her mother has taught her finance since small and her powerful father’s influence is everywhere. Dalex Energy is facing pressure from its investors and Hester has been trained to be the fresh new face of the company. Her well tuned speech to support her father goes wrong when her own plant skills go haywire.
She is one of thousands of teenagers around the world who have developed abilities to grow, manipulate and control plant life from their own bodies. Named Greenfingers by the world’s media, she’s more excited than ever about Dalex Energy when her suggestion of using these skills to develop Biofuels impresses not only her father but increasingly doubting investors too.
Her father gives her her first official project and unlimited funds to find a team of powerful teens just like her, to develop their Greenfinger skills to benefit the company.
This is where she meets Theo and the first grains of doubt in Dalex Energy bloom. Maybe her father and his scientists haven’t been completely open with their knowledge of climate change?
Theo too must reassess what he knows about Hester. Maybe she’s not a carbon copy of her billionaire father?
This CliFi (climate fiction) novel is a gripping read. Interspersed with perfectly possible scenarios throughout media, news items, personal social media sites and podcast transcripts, Green Rising is frightening in its perception of Earth’s future.
The fantasy aspect of teenagers growing plants from their own bodies doesn’t dilute the fear for our possible future whilst you’re immersed in the story, all while a budding romance builds into a rebellious solution.
I’ve been wanting to read Green Rising for some time and wasn’t disappointed. Well researched, with a full bibliography in the rear of the novel, I took away new frightening facts about Climate Change too.
Fascinating premise.
Author – Lauren James
Age – 12+
(2022, Walker Books, CliFi, Rebellion, Romance, First love, Friendships, Working together, Teamwork, Billionaire, Oil, Climate Change, Climate Disaster, Breaking Point, Science, Misleading Marketing, Lies, Plants, Seaweed, Fungi, Mushrooms, Ocean, Algae Blooms, Space Race, Live on Mars, Mars Colony)