While it has a little romance and a little tragedy, I don't really see this as a genuine star-crossed lovers kind of romance. Not at all. Their lives are beautiful, whether they are together or apart. This is more of a FAMILY saga, one that keeps developing, adapting, growing stronger even while the world changes so much. Raisa heads north, to Iceland; Amon heads south, to Ava'u, a Polynesian island group (where, a century before, the founder of Hopeland began to think about self-selecting families.) There he plays music, meets princesses, and encounters the redoubtable Kimmie Pangaimotu. Amon's life is one of quiet melancholy, until reality crashes into him in the form of Hurricane Velma. Ava'u becomes a climate-orphaned nation on the move, and it heads north -- with, in a uniquely McDonald flourish, its ancient gods in tow, tethered by a weather balloon. This is the story of ordinary people living through a world going through extraordinary change and how they keep going, it is a unique twist on found family, exploring all identities, genders, beliefs and is truly epic in scope. a b "Ian McDonald – Be My Enemy ( Everness Book Two) cover art and synopsis reveal". 25 August 2012. Archived from the original on 4 January 2014 . Retrieved 3 October 2018– via Upcoming4.me.

Hopeland by Ian McDonald | Goodreads

I found myself marveling at the idea of Hopeland -- a community that accepts anyone, of any mindset, race, orientation, ANYTHING -- that prides itself on being a Family of choice -- that just does WHATEVER THAT WORKS. We first follow Raisa, who wanders in a kind of distraught fugue across the globe until she ends up in Iceland. And there she will stay for the next twenty-two years, bearing Amon’s son and creating a new community and high-tech business that will come to have global reach and consequences. I remain intentionally vague, so as not to spoil your fun. His phone . . .’ He thinks about the truth. Truth and Grace are not necessary lovers. ‘His phone died.’ I win,’ she says simply and because the words cut no night, speaks them again, speaks them to the heedless city. ‘I win!’ Raisa's family are the Hopelands - more than a family, really; not a nation, certainly not an ethnicity or religion although with aspects of the latter. It takes the notion of 'found family' to extraordinary and glorious places and challenged a lot of how I think about family, how it's constructed and what it's for. Amon is a Brightbourne, a very different family but with its own legacy to contribute (and his family is where I started wondering if this was a fantasy of some sort).She stares up into his face. She is exhausted, eyes sunken, face jazzy with sweat and dust, nails chipped.

Hopeland by Ian McDonald | Waterstones Hopeland by Ian McDonald | Waterstones

Hopeland begins in Soho during the London riots of 2011 and ends in Greenland in 2033. Or perhaps in Eirin (once Ireland) in 2981. Or perhaps it does not end. What else? Corporate and geopolitical shenanigans, the squabbles of gods and an element of possible fantasy or magic that is very much part of the texture of the story but kept as subsidiary theme. Again, any other author I can think of would make 'electromancers' fighting duels with Tesla coils across the rooftops, and declaring themselves the protectors of London, the centre of the story. Or else the cursed family with its own haunting spirit. Or... Instead, here those things are real and important but very far from being at the centre of things, rather they deepen and add weight to what is a glorious, complex and engaging story, one that creates an entrancing world of its own and one that it is simply a joy to visit. The narrative structure and storytelling just did not work for me. A story like this is so dependent on character work and yet I found myself struggling to connect to this family. While this novel still some it's good points, I was overall left disappointed from initial expectations.Ian McDonald’s Hopeland has been 23 years in the making. In a 2014 interview conducted by Locus, McDonald mentioned coming across the idea for Hopeland – a family structure that would last for ten thousand years – in a magazine article he read in 2000. During that same interview, McDonald spoke about his forthcoming novel Luna, which at that point was planned as the first book in a duology. Things change. Ideas percolate. Duologies evolve into trilogies and two-decade-old concepts finally, eventually, see fruition – though shaped into something more substantial, noisier, and layered than was likely first conceived. When Raisa Hopeland, determined to win her race to become the next electromancer of London, bumps into Amon Brightbourne - tweed-suited, otherworldly, guided by the Grace - in the middle of a London riot, she sets in motion a series of events which will span decades, continents and a series of events which will change the world. They met while London burned. A encounter during a riot brought Amon Brightbourne together with Raissa Hopeland on a mad rooftop hunt for a family heirloom: a Tesla Coil. But there is no such thing as chance where Amon is concerned: he's been exiled from his family home because he's both cursed and blessed with the Grace — he lives a charmed life, but at the expense of those closest to him. The Grace made him fall in love with Raissa, and with her family, the extraordinary Hopelands — a family like stars in the sky, scattered but connected in constellations of affection, parenthood, love and responsibility. He measures up the gap. Run in, launch, the landing, traction: all against him. For him: the Grace. He makes his run, throws himself over the street, lands hard, pitches forward, breaks his fall with his hands.

Ian Mond Reviews Hopeland by Ian McDonald – Locus Online Ian Mond Reviews Hopeland by Ian McDonald – Locus Online

Looking at the challenges of a non-traditional disaster like climate change through the perspective of people from non-traditional families who lead pretty unusual lives, is quite a brilliant idea. The inclusion of people with genders outside the Western binary is a brilliant added touch. While I was aware of Samoan faʻafafine (fafa), I wasn't as familiar with the Tongan term fakaleitī, in this case translated to the fictional country of Ava‘u. We should pause at this point to posit an homage to Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, with its notion of a karass. Not only are the Hopelands a karass, but the concept derives from a man, Karl-Maria Lindner, who studied a tropical culture—the Polynesian islands of Ava’u—just as Vonnegut’s Bokonism arose from the tropical Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. This fertile, resonant notion of self-selecting “families” has always been a theme in SF, from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land to Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe. As I said, the writing is simply peerless: “His hand goes to the leather satchel, soft as kisses from age and love.” (...) “Soho ignores helicopters, breaking glass, rattling shutters, jeering voices, the fact that this is the year 2011.” (...) “for the night is dark and we must have soup” (nice one!) “Wandsworth was evaporating house by house; whole streets bought up and embalmed for investment.” Andreeva, Nellie (17 August 2015). "Shane Brennan To Adapt Ian McDonald's Sci-Fi Book Luna As TV Series". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved 10 October 2015. Hopeland is a fierce storm of a book, a story on an epic scale - covering thousands of miles and centuries of time, and also satisfying chunky in the hand. Yet it still has plenty of space for the personal and the small. No, it is the personal and the small - used to tell a big story.The parts that made me cry concerned the people of Ava' u surviving a catastrophic storm, only to discover that their aquifer has been breached by the sea so their home is no longer habitable. The entire nation become climate refugees and take an extraordinary journey north to settle in Greenland. Amon's connection to Raisa catalyses this and the epic voyage is seen through his eyes. This sequence of survival, solidarity, and adaptation is astonishingly moving, as it never veers into sentimental cliche or trivialises the plight of refugees. It also features a very striking scene when the ships from Ava' u encounter the ruins of an offshore libertarian community that has descended into chaos and death. This failed attempt to build a nation purely on contractual relationships makes a very effective contrast to the webs of connections both protagonists build. A small, heart-warming, and heartfelt coda took me entirely by surprise, even though, in retrospect, I could see it was expertly but subtly foreshadowed. But it starts in more familiar disunity, with a frenzied but typically vibrant panorama of the 2011 London riots: Over twenty years their lives and loves orbit around each other, through climate change, new religions, economic and technological revolution, resource wars and mass migration as Raissa tries to unite her family. there is — and always will be — Hope in her name. They love each other but they can never be with each other — until Amon must choose between family and his fear of what the Grace will do to the woman he has always loved.