When the entire world is bursting at the seems and not able to handle the stress, what is the answer? In The Offset, by Calder Szewczak, a special ceremony has been initiated.... When a child turns 18, if both parents are still alive, the child must choose one their parents to die in a special ceremony in order to offset the global effects of another life on the planet. This event is accepted, though not loved or embraced, because of its necessity.
Jac Boltanski is a scientist who is working on a revolutionary project to replace radioactive trees in Greenland with genetically modified trees. But someone may be messing with her data or the project itself.

Meanwhile, Jac's daughter Miri, with whom Jac has not had a very good relationship, has run away from home and brought back after a run-in with the law shortly before the next Offset ceremony. Miri has to decide if she will choose the parent she loves, or the parent she hates (Jac) who is actively working on a project that could ultimately cancel the need for the Offset ceremony.

The basic concept of the Offset is not unique to science fiction. Logan's Run comes first to mind and I suspect I could name more if I gave it some thought. But I haven't seen this theme lately despite its being more topical than ever.

But the theme of over-crowding and the science to fight it, takes a back seat to the human story. Jac's life and Miri's life - the human story of mother and daughter who don't get along is the real story here, framed in context of an overcrowded world gone awry and the science trying to correct it.

This is the kind of story that I truly enjoy. Grandiose themes and consequences that can doom an entire planet, but as humans our loves and lives are even more important to us. Calder Szewczak does a really good job of balancing the stories and keeping the human element in focus. But Szewczak doesn't ignore the global complications - the science isn't just background - the science is what could take this from just one book into a series.

In general, I enjoyed this read. There were times that I felt the book got a bit slow and I just wanted to jump ahead, but these moments were few.

Looking for a good book? The Offset by Calder Szewczak is a dystopian scifi novel of over-population and science but the heart of the novel is a parent/child relationship.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book. I was really looking forward to reading it as I love a dystopian story and this one didn't disappoint.

The book can be shocking, upsetting, and just straight bonkers, but at it's core all of those elements combine to make for a fascinating, albeit hopefully not realistic read.

At times incredibly bleak, this story offers a painful but heartbreaking concept: your parents should not have had you, but since they did, you must now sacrifice one of them.

That is the choice faced by our protagonist, Miri. A fierce, brave young woman running from her past to avoid her inevitable future.

The Offset is a well written, eerily plausible dystopian future novel that just didn't manage to grab me as much as I had hoped from the beginning. It's very well written, the characters feel accurate to their setting and situations, but I just didn't connect as much as I had hoped. Definitely worth reading; hopefully the authors aren't prescient.

Excellent story! Totally engrossing!. Looking forward to reading more by this author! Could not put this down!

The Offset is a book set in the near future where environmental disaster and climate change have altered life on earth to the point where on your 18th birthday you have to choose a parent to die. This is the "offset" that those who choose to become parents agree to when having children, to reduce the impact of a human life on the planet.

Miri is about to reach her 18th birthday, and is the child of two mothers, one is scientist, Professor Jac Boltanski working on Project Salix which is supposedly helping to save the world. But Miri hates her mother to the point she has run away from home and joined the anti natalists, a group which abhors those who choose to have children. So Miri's choice of parent seems pretty cut and dried from the start.

I found this book a little frustrating. I loved the concept but I would have preferred to see a lot more detail in the world building and character development. I understand that this book is the first in an intended trilogy, that might explain the ending which to me felt a little abrupt and left a lot of loose ends hanging.

It felt like a deliberate choice by the author not to give too much away, but it was pretty clear that the writer has this world in their head and I would have liked to have seen more of it, especially if there are a further two books to come. I probably would read the second book at least, just to satisfy my own curiosity about Miri.

The Offset is set in a dying world due to environmental issues and overpopulation. To remedy this, they made an agreement called "The Offset" a population control when a couple decides to have a child, that child must decide between their parents who get to die (offset). A death for a new life.

The story begins with Miri, 2 days shy of turning 18, witnessing an Offset and she has to choose which of her moms are going to die for the cost of her life. Alix, a retired doctor and her beloved mother; or Jac, the famous scientist who might be humanity's savior.

This was a depressing and compelling read. I really like the writing style. It's fluid and descriptive. I adore the premise and concepts. There are many instances it made me think of what I would've chosen when it was me in the same position. The Offset did an amazing job of delivering a wake-up call for some potential outcomes of global warming.

I did however have difficulties connecting with the main character, Miri. Since the book is focused on her or rather her decision, it affected my enjoyment. I find her annoying and she's the usual angsty teen who has a chip on her shoulder and when she decided, sadly, I did not feel the impact due to her being estranged from her parents.


Overall, this was a fascinating and quick read. It gives its readers thought-provoking questions on how would we choose to preserve humanity's survival.

2.5 stars

I knew next to nothing about this book when I started reading it and I think it was for the best. I'm still kind of confused about this book, as it's not bad it just left me confused in how I feel about the story.
Here we have our world in the future, we have a dystopia where the world is literally ending, and having children is a crime that if you commit the penalty it's death.
Some things I didn't like about this story, the author's writing, and the way that even begin our world I found it a bit confusing to understand how we ended up in the moment of the story, another thing that helped my confusion was the fact that book has many technical and scientific terms, half of the book I didn't understand because of that, even more taking in consideration that English is not my first language.
As I said the book is not bad, but I don't recommend it if you have very strong opinions about having children or not, so if this topic is a trigger for you maybe don't read this book because touches a lot on this subject, which I liked.
The ending of the book didn't make me like it either, I thought the ending was kind of open, it seemed to me that either it was missing some pages or that the author intended to write more because I had the feeling that the story wanted to end in an abrupt and shocking way but for me, it didn't work!

The Offset is set in the grim future when the consequences of environmental damage can no longer be ignored. To counter the issue of depleting resources, a life must be given in exchange for a new birth. On a child’s 18th birthday, they must choose which of their two parents will die for the sake of humanity.

Coming in at 240 pages, The Offset is a quick read that you’ll find yourself bingeing. I enjoyed that instead of focusing on the concept of the offset ceremony, as a whole, the story instead follows one family. Miri, days shy of her 18th birthday, grapples with making a selection between her two moms. You would think the decision is difficult since one of her moms, Jac, is a lead scientist/director of a project that could very well change the course of humanity. But Miri doesn’t have a close relationship with either of her parents, especially Jac, who she believes prioritized work over her family from day one.

The Offset was my first time reading a novel by an author duo, so I didn’t know what to expect. I was pleased to find that I couldn’t distinguish between the two writing styles. Even with the POV shifts, the writing was fluid and felt like one voice. I loved the ending, and if it had gone any other way, I probably would have been a bit disappointed.

There were several moments where I had to stop reading and question what I would do in this scenario. If the planet was dying, would I still willingly bring a child into this world? As a mother myself, how would I feel raising my child knowing my decision ultimately means she will have blood on her hands? How would this change my relationship with my significant other? Would I view birth as a crime against society like many others in this story did? Any book that requires such deep reflection is an ace in my mind.

I highly recommend this for fans of: short & quick reads, light dystopian, science, and environmental conflicts.

There is one solution that would benefit our climate massively, but it is a bitter pill to swallow. Less humans. We are the cause of pretty much all the issues that the Earth is currently having and when we are gone, it will happily float around the solar system without us. A little bit grubbier, but happy nonetheless. In The Offset by Calder Szewczak the unthinkable has happened - a law has passed to keep the population capped. When a child reaches their 18th birthday, they must decide which of their parents are killed. It is hard enough to decide between Daddy or chips, never mind between one parent or another.

Miri has run away from home. One reason is to get away from her overbearing mother, Professor Jac Boltanski, whose fame follows Miri everywhere. The other reason is the Offset. It will not be long until Miri must decide which of her two mothers must die; the Professor who is inventing a cure for the world’s ills, or Alix, a medic who saves lives and nurtured Miri as a child. Should Miri choose for her own reasons or for the world’s?
The reader is dropped into a situation that feels scarily possible and very bleak. Humans have become desperate, willing to kill their own and experiment on hybrid plants in a desperate attempt to survive. With our own current climate issues, these dystopian futures are proving popular to writers and are ringing truer as each year passes. Szewczak produces a future that is hard enough, but adds the concept of The Offset to compound matters.

This is not just a story of a dying world, but of a fractured family. A concept such as The Offset throws into stark relief family tensions. Do you dislike your parents so much that you would send them to their death? Some teenagers must have thought this, but to be given that power is another thing. Thankfully, Miri is not just a cliched sulky teenager, but a well-rounded character. She ran away a long time before the book is set so she has developed street smarts and a maturity that has helped her survive in a dying world. She feels guilty about even being born and cannot decide between her parents. She has always admired Alix, but to lose Jac could have major implications for the world’s future.

And here the book packs a further blow. The parallel story to Miri is that of Jac. The Professor is visiting a remote location to unearth why the genetical altered trees she developed are not producing the results they should. With potentially only two days left to live, Jac wants to see if her life’s work will be for something, but time is running out.

Szewczak intelligently keeps the two narratives separate, we only see Miri and Jac interact in flashbacks. Miri’s decision about The Offset is not affected by what is happening to Jac. We the reader are aware, but the characters are not. This leads to tension, anxiety and a finale that packs a real punch. The final pages are the equivalent of Szewczak walking on stage, blowing our minds, and then dropping the mic. Boom.

A dystopia in which people need to choose a parent to kill when they turn 18, a mysterious secret behind the dying of the Earth, a teenage main character... This book had it all to catch my eye. I haven't encountered many books focusing around the environment issues, so I thought it would be cool to check it out.

Unfortunately, everything was only barely scratched. The world, the characters and the plot all had tremendous potential, but it never went deep enough for me. I couldn't place the world the action was taking part in. How did the Earth become so bad? What happened to the people? How did we come to have the Offset? Those are all questions that are left unanswered, without even small hints of an explanation. It had me so confused that I had trouble placing the characters in the action, and therefore connecting with them. The only thing I found an interest for was the science behind the trees maintained by Miri's mom. She was the most engaging character for me!

However, Miri herself was soooooooooooooooooo annoying... I just hated her, and unfortunately, most of the book is centered around her. She holds a petty grudge against her moms for some reason, and it honestly just feels too much. She's basically emo in her behavior, like "Oh no, no one can understand the darkness of my mind and the reasons of my anger'. WHY DON'T YOU JUST TALK??? Is it because I'm becoming too old to relate to teenage characters? In any case, I found her unsufferable, and couldn't stand reading about her, which is a big problem since she's the main character...

I thought that in general, the book didn't provide enough information regarding the context for me to understand or care about the story. Maybe the second book will be more detailed about all those aspects, but I don't think I'm curious enough to read it when it does.

It was still very readable, but not deep enough for me!

The Offset is a disturbing yet compulsively readable first instalment in a proposed science fiction series that explores the issues of environmentalism and anti-natalism, positing a world in which, on their eighteenth birthday, every child must choose one of their parents to die as a carbon offset for their own life. Set in a near-future dystopia, those in power postulate that the earth is now so cataclysmically impacted by overpopulation and climate change that only drastic and immediate action will be able to make a difference to the situation, and even then it certainly is not guaranteed to solve the whole issue. The highly experimental project known as Project Salix is a novel concept that involves groups travelling to Greenland and planting, or reforesting it, with a plethora of genetically modified willow trees. This is what they hope will come in between humanity and its extinction.

But it has also been decided that there must be action in the short term too rather than simply carrying on as normal, and this comes in the form of the Offset. The Offset is a strategy devised to limit the earth’s population as they are depleting its resources; it demands that whenever someone reaches the age of eighteen, the child must choose which of their parents to execute. The policy is basically one in one out. We are then introduced to the family we will follow for the duration of the novel as they navigate life and the tough decision that is about to befall one of them. We meet Mira Boltanski a mere couple of days from this imminent yet impossible and horrific choice. She must decide between her two mothers which of them to effectively kill. Alix is a retired paediatrician and the parent Miri knows loves her the most, and Jac is a pioneering scientist heading up Project Salix and on whom humanity depends.

This is a compelling and thought-provoking cli-fi dystopia that shines a light, once again, on the important issues of climate and our finite resources. It's prophetic, incisive and addresses the social impacts of environmental break down including global warming and nuclear fallout, and the complexity and emotional dilemma at the heart of the story was absolutely gripping but also heartwrenching to me. It's a short, sharp book, but it packs a powerful (gut)punch, the writing is so, so beautifully crafted and the conceit of it all is both horrifying and fascinating. The moralising around reproduction and the intersection of anti-natalist ideas with environmentalism are also superbly fused into the plot. With some excellent, blindsiding twists, an unsettling atmosphere of pure dread and characters who are intriguing but hard to like, The Offset offers a tiny glimpse into the terrifying nature of our future. Highly recommended.

In The Offset, population is strictly controlled due to the Earth’s extreme pollution. If a couple have a child, that child at eighteen must pick one of her parents to die (offsetting their birth). Miri must decide between the mother she loves and the workaholic mother she hates. Does the extraordinary work fixing the planet done by the hated mom influence Miri’s choice?

The Offset probably has good intentions. It shows where ignoring climate change may lead us. Its world-building is great. However, the characters are cardboard thin. Even the plot, which feels like an even grimmer version of The Hunger Games, isn’t fleshed out much. Overall, the book is a miss for me. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3 stars.

Thanks to Angry Robot and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

In a world devastated by climate change, humanity has come up with a drastic solution to try and reduce carbon emissions: the Offset. For every child born, a parent is executed.

As Miri’s eighteenth birthday approaches, she’s faced with the choice of which of her parents to spare. Does she choose the mother who raised her or her brilliant scientist mother who may be the key to saving life on Earth from mass extinction?

The Offset by Calder Szewczak is a dystopian cli-fi novel with a harrowing moral dilemma.

However, unfortunately, the story drops the ball on what could have been a gut-wrenching and emotionally devastating novel.

I personally did not feel the full emotional weight of Miri’s decision that I had been hoping for since she’s a runaway who’s been estranged from her parents for years and doesn’t appear attached to either of them.

Also, the end felt jarringly abrupt and left so many questions unanswered. I would have preferred a bit more closure and explanation for my taste.

Overall, I adore the base of The Offset’s premise and the potential it held. However, Miri’s own disconnect towards her parents ultimately prevented me from fully investing in the story.

Oh my gosh, what a fascinating concept the Offset is! Set in a dystopian future following devastating climate changes, the world is dying! Yes, you read that right. The world is actually dying! With limited resources there has to be control over the population numbers and reproduction. People are encouraged not to have children in order to preserve those resources and to try to keep the world going a bit longer. But the 'mindless, selfish idiots' that choose to have a child are then forced to take part in the Offset ceremony when that child hits 18. And 'what is the Offset ceremony?' I hear you ask. Well in a nutshell, when the child hits 18 years of age they have to choose which of their parents is killed in order restore the balance in the world! Our rather sullen and stroppy protagonist, Miri, is just about to face that decision. The only problem is that the parent she actually dislikes and would easily choose to be Offset is actually the scientist who is leading various projects to try to save the world and she is super renowned and loved! Hmm... tough choice kid.
I won't lie, I pondered many times over who my eldest Son might choose to be Offset if this was our reality. Although I guess it doesn't really matter too much as with his little Brother only 5 years younger my Husband and I would have zero chance of survival anyway.
So, I was gripped from page 1 because of this interesting concept and I kinda liked Miri with her defiant attitude and a fire in her belly. The main problem I had with this book was that the author uses chapters told from Jac's perspective, the scientist parent, to explain why the world changed and what was being done to lessen the effects people had on the world. And whilst these were at times really interesting and informative, there were also times when they were super 'sciency' and difficult to follow. The only other problem I had was that the story did randomly jump timelines several times but with nothing to note or alert readers when they did so it initially caused some confusion each time this happened. And it's because of these 2 issues that the book ended up being 3 stars instead of 4 for me.

Firstly, a huge thank you to Angry Robot Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

CW: graphic depictions of death, animal abuse

I love seeing how the dystopian genre has been growing in the last few years and how many unique concepts continue to emerge. The Offset is definitely a novel with a refreshing, albeit distressing, view of the extremes humanity will go to to save themselves which I was fascinated, and disturbed, by.

I really enjoyed seeing how Szewczak has tackled the relationship between overpopulation and the deterioration of the Earth. The notion of a child picking which parent to sacrifice on their 18th birthday as a way of ‘offsetting’ the population immediately sets the scene for the novel when our protagonist, 17-year-old Miri, goes to watch an Offset take place. Szewczak does not shy away from how brutal this world is, especially with the graphic descriptions of the execution going wrong. From the start you know that this isn’t for the faint of heart and you get a firsthand glimpse into the corruption of a society consumed by fear, one who is willing to sacrifice anyone else to ensure their own survival.

The novel is set in dystopian London which I also loved, for the most part the world that Szewczak describes feels completely alien but every now and then we will be reminded that this is taking place in London with the reference to a landmark (eg. the London Eye being a prison) or a famous street name. This would be incredibly jarring, but not in an unwelcome way. It made the novel, and the situation in general, even more harrowing as you’re reminded that this isn’t some far off world, this is London.

Throughout the novel there is no denying that there is a sense of urgency, Miri’s own Offset is just two days away and whilst she knows which one of her mothers she is going to nominate the fact that it’s the renowned Professor Jac Boltanski who is leading Project Salix which is breaking new ground to save the world complicates matters. Whilst I really enjoyed the fact that this novel spans such a short period of time, again lending to that urgency and tension which Szewczak captures so brilliantly, I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters. I could understand their importance to the world they’re in and their complex relationships, however, I found I wasn’t invested in the characters themselves so I didn’t find the impact of someone needing to be sacrificed as hard hitting as I could have.

Overall, this was a fascinating take on the future of London, and the world, which forces you to consider the lengths you would go to to ensure your own survival or that of the human race. However, I would have loved this novel to be longer to really be able to sink my teeth into the world and the characters.

This novel is BLEAK. Climate destruction has lead to the introduction of 'The Offset'- when a child turns 18, they are forced to choose one parent to suffer a public execution. Reproduction is somewhat curtailed, but 'reproviolence' flourishes- underground clinics cater to pregnant women who have been beaten and children who have been abused in an attempt to change their decision. The protagonist is in a particularly tough position- one of her mothers is a successful climate scientist who may be on the brink of saving the world. Her other mother is a paediatric surgeon, and a much nicer person to be around. Unable to cope with the pressure and keen to confront the world outside her privileged surroundings, Mari runs away from home two years before her 'offset date'- her 18th birthday. She returns, malnourished and tailed by a disturbing ex-lab rat- to learn her mother might not be so close to saving the world after all.
This novel's premise is not unique- I was immediately reminded of The Declaration and The Carhullan Army, which both take place in an industrialised dystopian UK- but the story is uniquely dark, beginning with a public execution and ending with a wholly unnecessary death (if I had been reading a paperback, I would have hurled the book across the living room!) The author tackles issues like extremism and Scottish independence from multiple angles; the issue of inequality is 'shown, not told' during our tour of Mari's beautiful childhood home and the facility where her mother works, which costs billions to maintain. The novel asks us to consider the impact of climate change on a micro and macro scale- 'which parent would you sacrifice?' quickly grows into 'how much should the current generation sacrifice to guarantee the Earth's survival?' No answers are forthcoming.
I would recommend this book to fans of dystopian fiction and cli-fi, especially novels set in Britain.

What a fab premise!

In order to discourage procreation, the Offset ceremony is held in this dystopian world, where one of your parents are sentenced to death. This concept was so thrilling and this book is unlike anything I've ever read. I really liked the world-building and the characters. The pacing was great, and kept me on my feet. Also, the writing was pretty good! I found out later that this is written by a duo, and wow it was quite descriptive to make the world so real.

Overall, a pretty solid read. Highly enjoyable, would recommend!

The Offset is a complex and bleak novel about choice, sacrifice, and societal worth. It’s a dystopian Cli-Fi that is also, I would argue, a bit of a literary fiction.

I have to state right off the bat that the Offset itself, the concept of a child upon turning eighteen being forced to decide which of their parents must be killed to “offset” the environmental cost of their own life, is clearly not meant to be a realistic vision of the future but a vehicle in which to show the drastic state climate change and overpopulation have placed on the world. As such, the political aspects of this concept are not really discussed, nor are we given history as to how this measure was put into practice, nor are we told whether this is a UK measure or worldwide. In truth, something like this would never pass in anything but a totalitarian state, but the concept is fascinating and creates a rich soil in which to grow interesting ideas. This is where the literary fiction aspect comes in - the book is designed to make you think more than entertain.

The book also features fluid and descriptive prose that reminded me a little of Donna Tartt, in that it’s elegiac in how it uses the physical world to evoke emotion. I very much enjoyed the bleak and harsh tone and I thought the book was the perfect length, as any longer and it would have made me depressed.

I’m rather torn about the characters. I understood them while not entirely liking them. Miri is a teenager burdened with a huge and terrible responsibility - she runs away from home not only because of the preemptive guilt she must be suffering from but also because her parents are always working and one is cold and demanding. Jac is burdened with guilt over not spending enough time with her daughter while being driven by a higher purpose. Yet, I didn’t feel I got to know either of them as much as we could have. Miri’s years of homelessness are mentioned more in passing; we don’t really “get” her as much as we could have. Jac was quite easy to understand, but you also don’t like her very much. Also, aside from her profession, we don’t learn a lot about Alix either. Then again, if we loved the characters the story would have been very hard to read, almost too dark.

The novel doesn’t feature much of a plot. Aside from a moment of intrigue, a great deal of the story features rather everyday life and flashbacks and takes place over the course of only two days. That being said, I was enthralled and never once did I stop wondering what the ending would be.

Speaking of the ending, in my mind it could have gone one of three ways and I was leaning far more towards the outcome that occurred. That doesn’t mean I think it was too predictable - in fact, I was hoping I was wrong.

Overall, this is not a happy story where we save the earth in the end. This is a warning to stop screwing around with the planet.