After reading a lot of really difficult works in this class, it was refreshing to sort of take a breather with Hurricane Fever. I feel like this is one of those books that you would see people reading at the beach or on their porches when they’re just trying to enjoy a lazy kind of day and escape from the real world. That being said, there is more to this book than just a quick adventure in the Caribbean. Tobias Buckell has infused themes of race, climate change, and corporate deceit into a book that could have ultimately winded up being all too easy.
Nisi Shawl’s article brings up two classic spy characters in her write up, Ian Fleming’s James Bond and Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne. One of the major similarities between these two is their being white. In Hurricane Fever and Buckell’s previous work, the main protagonists are black. This makes me wish that these would be made into movies because it would be really cool to see a spy series featuring black characters, which this day in age shouldn’t even be an issue. Buckell also uses preconceived notions about race well in his book, like when the hotel patron hands her towel to Roo thinking that he works for the hotel. Instead of losing his cool, however, Roo uses it to his advantage which shows that he isn’t just level headed and calm, but also takes advantage of every situation.
What’s also surprising about this book that I can’t really say about a lot of the other stuff we’ve read this semester is just how subtle it is. Maybe I’m just a little bit more than clueless, but I had no problem believing that the sunken islands in the story were actually sunk in real life. The best kind of fiction is fiction that makes us believe in what we’re reading, otherwise we’re reading an outlandish story that probably may not even be worth the paper that it’s printed on. I loved The Year of the Flood for creating a future world that shouldn’t exist, but may actually one day. Hurricane Fever did the same thing. It created a world that isn’t exactly like ours, but may mirror the world we will live in within the next decade or so. All of this is done without Buckell lecturing or providing us with tedious facts that really only seem to exist to make the book longer. I’m looking at you Climate Changed…
I want to step away from what the book is about for a moment and focus on the style that it’s written in. This is the only flaw I can see with this book, but it’s a flaw that was big enough to keep me distracted through some of the reading. First of all, there were times where I didn’t believe in the character of Roo. After Delroy is killed, he sort of shifts into overdrive with his mission for revenge and only brings up his pain a few times during the book. I would’ve like to see Roo in pain more over Delroy to make me really want to see him get his revenge. As it stands, it just wasn’t used enough to really grab my attention, and I just didn’t really care about Delroy all that much to begin with. Also, the writing could be a little choppy at times. This definitely helped move the book along, but I would have liked to see some nice descriptions or just more elaborate. That’s just a matter of taste, however, and not an objective flaw.
Hurricane Fever is more than just an action/spy novel. It explores important themes of climate change and race that gave the novel some backbone. While being smart with its themes, however, it never bogged me down in too much preaching or lecturing. It kept up a quick pace and I’m very thankful for that. I just wish there was a little bit more to the book in terms of description and emotion. Still, it’s definitely worth a quick read and provides an ample amount of information for discussion. It’s certainly one of the more entertaining books we’ve read.
