The Light Pirate: A Novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton
The Light Pirate
Young Adult, New Adult, Literary Fiction, Dystopian Fiction
Grand Central Publishing
December 6, 2022
Kindle, Hardback, Audiobook, Audio CD
336
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.
Humanity was an ecological disaster, as far as Phyllis was concerned. A misstep made by an otherwise magnificently intelligent system of life and death. Evolution could do so much better. Someday, it would.
The Light Pirate by Lily Books-Dalton is the story of Wanda’s life in Florida, from beginning to end. Born in the middle of hurricane Wanda, hence her name, Wanda’s life transverses the climate demise of the state of Florida with a peripheral glimpse of these catastrophic occurances throughout the country. Fortuitously, she is helped raised by Phyllis, a retired school teacher and prepper, who helps prepare Wanda for a life after the modern world collapses and is guided by a strange connection to glowing microscopic beings that guide her.
Billed as a “meditation” on the catestrophic and dystopian future facing humanity as the result of climate change, The Light Pirate has received many accolades and acknowledgements. It provides ample opportunities for thought and discussion on the issue of climate change as well as adaptations and survival on a personal level. I’m still confused on the inclusion of the bioluminescent organisms and their affinity for Wanda as it has to do with the climate discourse and how people will exists after a energy and technology focused world crumbles.
From an purely intellectual perspective I understand the intent of The Light Pirate. However, from a reader centered point of view I’m still not sure where it was going and what it was hoping to accomplish. Reading this story felt like when you are in an accident caused traffic back-up on the interstate; you spend all that time inching toward the scene but when you arrive at the cause of the congestion nothing exists but a few broken remains and skid marks on the pavement. Looking at it from an entertainment angle there were a number of aspects of the story that felt vague and disjointed. Probably my biggest issue was the first person point of views from a number of characters, other than Wanda, and then they died. Again, still not really sure of the intent in writing like that other than to cause an overall negative feeling in the reader. While the ending attempts to provide a glimmer of hope, it is overshadowed by the overall tragic tone of the book.
The time for marking ecological change and acting on it has passed, and if she is honest, there is a relief in releasing those fervent, unfulfilled desires for solution. Now all that’s left is to behold these environments as they transition. The great rewilding, as she likes to call it. Humans have spoiled so much, but nature is resourceful. It dies and is reborn as something new. Hew work not is to watch this occur.
While I did not particulary enjoy The Light Pirate, it is a well-written, curious tale of Brooks-Dalton’s percieved future dystopian world as a result of climate change that can provide a segue into the present debate of how this issue and its subsequent consequences should be addressed.
Tanya’s love for books has been a lifelong passion that she likes sharing with others. Reading is also the thing that relaxes her after a day of juggling the many responsibilities that come with being being wife to an amazing man, mother to four great kids spread around the world, business manager, and farm hand on their place in southwest Missouri; home to Akaushi cattle and a menagerie of pygmy goats, horses, chickens, dogs and cats.
