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    The Light Pirate
    The Light Pirate
    The Light Pirate
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Light Pirate

    Written by Lily Brooks-Dalton

    Narrated by Rosemary Benson

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    For readers of Station Eleven and Where the Crawdads Sing comes a hopeful, sweeping story of survival and resilience spanning one extraordinary woman’s lifetime as she navigates the uncertainty, brutality, and arresting beauty of a rapidly changing world.

    Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.

    As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.

    Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateDec 6, 2022
    ISBN9781668611401
    The Light Pirate

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    Reviews for The Light Pirate

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Wanda arrives during a terrible hurricane in Florida which marks the beginning of the end for the area as it submerges under water and heat. In The Light Pirate, Lily Brooks-Dalton tells Wanda’s story in four distinct parts as she comes of age in a world collapsing amid climate change. What makes this novel so good is how real it all feels, and how beautifully Brooks-Dalton illuminates the disintegration of one life but the emergence of something different.
    • 4/5
      An interesting read which leaves you with environmental concerns. In a fictional Florida town a family endures yet another storm losing one child and a mother giving birth during the raging hurricane . The story follows the father, remaining son and the daughter Wanda, born during the storm. Living in Rudder Florida gets increasingly difficult with storms and town services, schools, cell service everything shutting down and people evacuated . But Wanda and her dad stay. Luke moves to LA but it too is disintegrating ( by fires). Wanda is entrusted to Phylis . A scientist and survivorlest. The rest of the novel us hiw they , mostly Wanda lives in a world that is returning to water.
      Really brings to life where our world could be heading. Is it an eggsageration? It’s scary to think about but recent climate change tells us it cannot be ignored .
    • 5/5
      This book is so beautifully written and heart wrenching. Dystopian but I can really imagine this happening in the future.
    • 5/5
      Riveting and brutal and just a bit hopeful. Really well-written interior lives of a wide variety of characters. A rare artwork that strikes that Neko Case-style "Nature is the most divine; Nature will fucking kill you" reverence.
    • 4/5
      Wanda was born in the middle of a devastating hurricane and that tragedy sets the tone for this novel of the disappearance of Florida as we know it under a continuing barrage of storms, rising seas, and the breakdown of society not just in Florida but throughout the United States. The story stays small and local - how Wanda and her family cope with loss - of family, of home, of community. But it is also the story of change and adaptation - of building new families and communities to fit the new world. It feels very contemporary but also has that flavor of "end of the world" stories and what comes after.
    • 2/5
      The Light Pirate opens with a storm named Wanda creating mayhem and destruction for Kirby Lowe, his wife Frida, and Kirby’s two young sons. This section focuses on power: the power of the storm, the loss of electrical power, and the loss of power against nature. The reader learns that storms reign supreme against man and that the country remains powerless to the severity of each storm. The power section ends with the death of Frida and the younger son, Flip, and the untimely birth of Wanda. The second section describes water and follows the childhood of Wanda, his brother Lucas, and her father Kirby. The flow of words has fallen and the book plummets into ennui. Nothing salvages the flowery language of the opening section.
    • 3/5
      I did not read anything about this book before I picked it up to read for a book club. I was therefore quite surprised when it turned into a futuristic novel of what might happen in Florida if global warming continued. While I appreciate the survival skills Wanda develops, the depressing scenario is hard to read.
    • 5/5
      This was a beautifully written, elegiac story that paints a frighteningly realistic picture of what may happen once the effects of climate change ramp up. Set in Florida, it begins during a hurricane and follows the life of the girl born during that storm and named for it, Wanda, as civilization disintegrates and she must adapt to the new reality. I couldn't help comparing this to Brooks-Dalton's first novel, as the themes are similar: the placid endurance of nature, the reverence for a place, the sense of being isolated in a world that isn't cruel, necessarily, but is indifferent. The characters in this second novel were stronger, though. Wanda and her people were people I felt I came to know and understand. A lovely book, with an undercurrent of resignation that isn't quite hopelessness.
    • 4/5
      Hurricane Wanda was the beginning of the end for Florida. It was especially life changing for the Lowe family – a time of utter devastation as well as the birth of their daughter, Wanda, born prematurely during the storm and named by her mother with her dying breath.

      As hurricanes became fiercer and more frequent, the water levels rose throughout Florida. With each storm more infrastructure was destroyed until public workers like Wanda’s father, linesman Kirby Lowe could not keep up. One by one, the utilities blinked off – electricity, cell phone. Roads as well as supermarkets and gas stations were abandoned. Eventually entire cities were deserted and Florida was left to become wild once more.

      Although Floridians had no choice but to leave, climate change was wreaking havoc everywhere. While certain areas of the country were moving more slowly toward extinction, there was no doubt they were moving.
      .
      The child Wanda and her best friend, a retired prepper named Phyllis chose to stay in Florida’s swamp land.

      And then there is Wanda’s gift – a touch of magical realism through the story that may help save or sink them.

      One cannot survive by desperately clinging and trying to restore what was. It’s a bit of a Buddhist twist for me – suffering is caused by attachment to what was; the only path is moving forward.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful though bitter climate future story. Florida is going under water bit by bit, and civilization slowly migrates north, leaving few people behind with no infrastructure to speak of. There are tiny bits of magical realism, and the relationships are strong and endearing. It's hard to call this dystopian when it feels like our very near future.
    • 4/5
      I am really starting to get into cli-fi aka climate dystopians! The Light Pirate chronicles the life of a young girl who was born during a horrible, life altering hurricane. Delirious and dying her mother named her after the hurricane itself and Wanda grows up in a world much different than that of her parents. Hurricane seasons get longer and longer and Florida is barely hanging on. It is slowly reverting back to its swampy ways and the United States is ready to cut its tether to it. Her father is a lineman - one of the people who keeps the power on - but with the near constant hurricanes - how much longer is that even feasible? Wanda's best friend and mentor is a woman who lives down the street and has spent her life preparing for this exact eventuality. Known as a survivalist - if anyone can withstand what is coming it's her. This book felt more real than not and as Venice keeps sinking and the sea level keeps rising - who knows what is in store for Florida during my lifetime. A unique and captivating read!
    • 4/5
      Another dystopian novel with Florida returning to the sea due to more intense hurricanes and rising sea levels. Story focuses on a lineman in a small town who can’t relate well to people, not even his young family in favor of work. He is left widowed with a young daughter and 2 sons to raise. The book describes the gradual devastation of rising temperatures and how this town attempts to cope but ultimately fails. The daughter is our heroine.
    • 1/5
      Solid beginning, horrible ending and a typical dystopian middle laced with pointless magic.
    • 3/5
      The Light Pirate, Lily Brooks-Dalton, author; Rosemary Benson, narrator
      What at first appears to be a novel about the environment’s deterioration, starting with weather events that get increasingly more and more violent and dangerous, becomes a bit of a treatise on the future of our world and our complicity in its destruction.
      Hurricane Wanda, sweeps into Rudder, Florida, with fury. Frida, married to Kirby Lowe, is suddenly stricken with labor pains, a month early. Kirby is out checking the lines because of the impending hurricane. He helps to keep the lights on. He had refused to evacuate as she had wanted. His sons, Phillip, 8, and Lucas, 12, have secretly left the house while their stepmother, who was in denial about her early labor pains, lied down hoping they would pass. The children willfully disobeyed her orders to stay in the house, There disobedience brought tragic consequences to the family.
      When Kirby arrived home and found out the boys were missing. He did not wait to find out anything else, but left to search for them. Therefore, he did not know of Frida’s dilemma. Frida, was now not only frantic about the boys, she was also in greater pain as her contractions increased. During their absence, she gives birth to a baby girl, all by herself. Although she successfully delivers her baby, she dies in childbirth.
      The child is foolishly named Wanda, for the storm. She is raised by her father and her older brother, Lucas. A decade passes. Wanda is a strange child, with no friends. Her name reminds everyone of the hurricane, Hurricane Wanda, that brought so much tragedy and devastation to the town on the day of her birth. The town is still in need of many repairs. She is bullied by her classmates. One day, when she disobeys the rules and ventures to “the edge”, where the ocean has encroached upon the land in Rudder, a sixth grader, Corey, pushes her in and holds her down. His twin sister Brie (later known as Bird Dog), objects, but he ignores her. Suddenly, a strange luminescence lights up the water. There is no explanation, and the children who were watching without objection to her torture, suddenly leave, believing that she is a freak. She rises to the surface, gasping, and does not divulge what happened to her to her father or brother. From then on, her father will not allow her to stay alone. She is cared for by a neighbor, while he and Lucas, now also a linesman, work to keep the power on. Phyllis, the caregiver, is a scientist and survivalist who also has no real relationships or friends. She is a loner who keeps track of the changes in the environment and soon teaches Wanda the same skills. Wanda is happier than she has ever been in her life. They are both well suited to each other. Because they are different, they have both been rejected by their community.
      As time passes, the effects of climate change are mounting. In Florida, the water level is rising, land mass is shrinking, certain species of plants and animal life are disappearing, and new ones are developing. As the rain continues to fall, life on the ground becomes more difficult. The skills that Phyllis is teaching Wanda become more and more important. They will soon help to keep both of them alive.
      As the time passes, tragedy again touches Wanda over and over. Her father is gone, Phyllis is gone. Her brother Lucas is gone. She is alone. How does she survive? With whom does she engage in a loving relationship? Is their anyone around for company, conversation? Can the devastating changes in the climate be slowed or reversed? Will the planet be covered in water and the land mass totally disappear? Can anyone be trusted? As Florida slowly submerges under water, survivors live above it, in the trees, on top floors of homes, anyplace they can. Services disappear. Food is short. No stores are open. No doctors are present. There is no law and order. The skills that Phyllis taught Wanda are vital to her continued survival.
      The book takes place over several decades as the weather and life in Florida and the rest of the country totally deteriorates as in the predictions of former Vice President Al Gore. It does stretch the imagination beyond the point of credibility at times, in the same way his theories did, the theories that have been disproved, actually. However, the message of the book is clear. Privilege is ultimately worthless. Climate change will destroy the world if it remains unchecked. No one wants to bring children into this world. Same sex love is possibly preferred for its compassion and compatibility. Men are more toxic, quick to react without thought. Women are more thoughtful and responsive to the needs of others. The book, like so many today, promotes progressive theories regarding climate, evolution, male toxicity, sexual conduct, privilege and survival. If you are in agreement with the premises and opinions presented in this book, if you believe that humanity, and not nature, is responsible for the increasingly violent and destructive weather events, it might be a good idea to hedge one’s bets and learn basic survival skills to prepare for the impending doom.
    • 4/5
      This book fortells a future when due to global warming the climate is out of control. It take place primarily in Florida after a destructive huricane takes place. Two women emerge as primary characters. trying to survive in this hostile environment with a paranoid survivalist mentality. You become fans rooting for them to suceed. The novel is well written and engaging, It might make the basis for a good sceenplay.
    • 5/5
      I’m so glad I took a chance on this book! I love adventures and this climate fiction/dystopian novel was unlike any I have read.

      Wanda, the main character was born during a major hurricane and her family suffered a great tragedy at the time. Raised by her older brother and father, Wanda was somewhat of a misfit among other kids her age.

      Her world opened up when her father leaves her to stay with Phyllis, a nearby neighbor and former university professor who knows Wanda’s background. Phyllis introduces Wanda to the world around her by teaching her about doomsday prepping, biology, the eco-system. She teaches Wanda to be self-sufficient for the future when Florida disappears and the world around them becomes treacherous. At some point in the story Wanda learns she has a special gift and Phyllis helps her to learn to use the gift in a safe manner.

      Readers who enjoyed Where the Crawdads Sing will likely enjoy this novel. There is a bit of magical realism weaved into the story, which I loved. The tone throughout is dismal, but also interesting. It’s hard to imagine what our society would do if our world fell apart in a similar way. However, the story is also hopeful and illustrates how resilient human beings can be when faced with adversity.

      Many thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for allowing me to read and advance copy. I am happy to recommend this book to readers and offer my honest review.
    • 4/5
      What an absolute delight of a book. Brilliantly written, fairly terrifying in its general plausibility, and with just a little hint of magic tossed in for good measure.