I received an advanced reading copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, John Murray Press and the author Michelle Min Sterling. ]
A really interesting post-apocalyptic premise and vividly told. It was gripping at times but dragged on at others, often with the jump to past/present slightly unclear. Left on a bit of a frustrating cliff hanger but imagine this is sowing the seed for second book in the series. 3 stars rather than 4 due to this slightly disjointed feeling throughout. Would recommend for readers who enjoyed books like Station Eleven.

2.5 rounded to 3.

This book was an interesting concept to me, I've never read any Cli-Fi so I was interested to delve into a dystopian with Climate Change at the heart of the book. There were three central POV's, we met with the tutor based at Camp Zero, The Blooms, White Alice and we are introduced to The Floating City.

Some parts of this felt a little dis-jointed, I'm unsure if its because the stories never truly for me come to a pivotal point. I wasn't especially engaged with any of the characters and I felt that the flashbacks at time disrupted my headspace and I'd need to get my bearings again. That said, I really liked The Barber, he was a focal character for me and I liked how we were introduced to what happened with Grant and Jane.

It was an interesting introduction into Cli-Fi for me, but I wasn't wholly invested in the characters, and that's a must for me when the plot is very character driven.

Great dystopian read - set a couple of decades in the future, climate change has devastated the globe. The elite have created a new society, floating on an island maintained at a perfect state, with all the luxuries they care to indulge in.

Rose chooses to work in the Floating City, essentially as a prostitute, and before long finds herself working uniquely for one man who has many plans for the future of life on the planet.

The narrative flips between the Floating City, and a station where a group of women initially conducting a scientific study soon find themselves abandoned, and create their own sustainable community. Rose is the thread who binds all the stories together, this is a compelling read, unnerving at times.

I didn’t know much about Camp Zero when I went into it, but the bits I knew (global warming and its effects in the future mixed in with thriller elements) got me quite intrigued.

I have to say this was really interesting and the first half really sucked me in, but the final one, and especially the ending, left me a bit disappointed. I expected a little more.

This distopian novel is set in Canada and the US (I think,) in 2050 (sometimes, I think) in a world that's been savaged by climate change and running out of resources.
This was a very confusing story, there are 3 different POV not necessarily running in tandem which failed to make it the whole story gel... However the story is still very engaging and I didn't struggle to get through it. I sound slightly contradictory...which is confusing...but that matches my opinion...bit confused! The characters are strong but I think it would have been better to let the character Rose/Nari or Aurora really take the lead because you didn't get to grips with them enough to invest in the them...and the time hops really were slightly... again confusing!??🤣🙈..

This starts with three separate stories that come together later on. The world has been pretty much ruined by climate change, so it is pretty topical. Most people have implants to be connected to the version of the internet, which is also probably not far off happening in reality. The story weaves the characters together well in the second half, but the final ending is somewhat unsatisfying. Very strong women characters in a male dominated society. Interesting read

'Camp Zero' is an interesting take on dystopian fiction, as it is set during the decline of the planet and humankind, rather than the more common setting of humanity trying to reestablish itself in the ruins.
Set in the not-too-distant future, and with the climate situation already too far gone to turn around, the elite are settling in floating cities on the oceans, while the rest of the population are constantly online via their Flick devices, implanted into their brains at birth.
As the planet heats up, a few small groups of people head to the frozen north - a group of women AKA White Alice, supposedly employed as climate surveillance, but who are fast realising their jobs might not be quite what they signed up for; a group of men AKA The Diggers, again potentially there on false pretences to establish a series of habitable domes for a new community outpost, overseen by an increasingly erratic tech entrepreneur, and serviced by a group of sex workers known as the Blooms.
These three groups, seemingly completely disparate at the start of the novel, turn out to have common threads as the story unfolds, with several subplots adding to the intrigue. Much like the icy tundra and cold concrete of the key locations, I found this book a little cold and sterile. With multiple key characters, it felt lacking in real heart, leaving me kinda latching on to one of the Blooms, Rose.
The story was over-ambitious for me, trying to weave together way too many subplots into one relatively short book. As I approached the end, I started to feel like this should have been a series of books, which would have given the author more of a chance to develop both the characters and the plotlines in more satisfying depth. As it is, it feels like a frustrating skim across the surface of a good story.

Thrilling, immersive and disturbingly prescient, Camp Zero is about the world we've built and where we go from here. Sizzles with tension, desire, and a forever-escalating sense of menace! Let this supremely enjoyable thriller whisk you up, up and away. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set in a world where climate change has led to increased temperatures and the fossil fuel industry is depleted. A camp has been set up in the north of Canada to try to provide a base for the future. The story then breaks into three strands - we have the prostitutes brought in to service the management of the camp, which include Rose, a Korean girl wanting to earn enough to save her mother. Rose has been recruited to work at the camp and spy for her previous employer.

Grant comes from a very wealthy family, but he is rebelling against them and has applied to teach at the camp as the start of a new community and to atone for some of the ways his family have made their money.

There is a second research station 'White Alice' in which a group of professional women - botanists, geographers, cartographers - are working on climate surveillance.

The three strands are quite separate for a while, and I reached a point about two thirds in where I couldn't really understand why White Alice was involved, as we were mainly following Camp Zero. Then, all of a rush, the strands began to collide and a pattern finally emerged, albeit a fairly contrived pattern.

The story is interesting, although there's a lot more soul searching and a lot less general backstory than I might have liked, and I felt the strands weren't manipulated very skilfully. Overall a good read.

Thank you to NetGalley and John Murray Press for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I think there's a slight disconnect between the cover combined with the publisher's blurb vs reality. The writing style is fine but I struggled to relate or just connect with the characters in this one. I'm a fan of the set up but actual execution didn't click for me. I'll avoid spoilers but it's all a bit Handmaiden's tale as far as I'm aware (that never appealed either).

Mark it up to personal tastes..

Thanks to the pub for copy.

In the not too distant future, humanity's ignorance of climate change has caught up with them. Floods & fires have made great swathes of land uninhabitable. If you have money you can live in the Floating City- otherwise it is a miserable existence. In the far North an architect is building a habitat. Rose, in an a attempt to secure a safe living space for her Korean mother goes to work at the camp as an escort. Her real motive is to find out exactly how this project is progressing. In return for her information her mother will get an apartment in the Floating City. Grant, from an extremely wealthy family tries to escape their corruption & comes to the camp as a teacher. Further North a military early warning base run by a group of women fight for survival. The story is told from these three points of view. To start with that was fine but as the story progressed I became slightly confused with the timeline.

It was a good read that left me wondering what would happen next. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

Set a few decades ahead in a futuristic but believable world. I both enjoyed but disliked this novel at the same time. I truly hope it doesn't come true.

The first two-thirds of the story was intriguing. I wondered about the timelines for the two settlements, how the characters would be connected and the implications for Rose of the choices she made.
As the story progressed, some of the characters made decisions that felt out of character, and past choices were revealed that didn’t match what I’d come to expect of their behaviour. By around 80% there were several events which stretched the limits of my belief, and this impacted my overall enjoyment. It also made me scrutinise the story’s structure, pace and writing style more closely. When I start to do that with a book I know that it’s reached the tipping point where the things that are bugging me about it outweigh the things I’m enjoying.
I couldn’t really relate or warm to the characters. Grant’s character in particular became more unlikeable in the latter parts of the book. Ultimately the whole thing became a little far fetched for me and the characters lacked appeal.
It was readable, and I had no problems with the writing style. It was easy to picture the scenes and conveyed the atmosphere of the cold north very well.
The end was an anticlimax and it’s safe to say that this one wasn’t really for me.

Three different POVs for a good dystopia set in a not so removed future. The climate crisis is at its worse and technology is keeping people under control.
Cool weather and fresh air are for privileged.
The characters are all on the grey, nobody can be trusted but something will happen.
A bit slow and dragging at time, a though provoking read.
3.5 upped to 4
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

If you were forced to sum up Camp Zero with a single comparison, you could say: "Climate change meets The Handmaid's Tale" - thought that is, of course, an oversimplification.

Set in the far north of Canada, on of the few remaining cool spots in the world, there a number of points of view going on in this book. First up are the women of White Alice. They live in an isolated research station, happy with their small community but unsure what the outside world of men holds for them if they ever decide to leave.

Then there's Rose, arguably the main character, and a 'bloom' or escort. In exchange for housing, she's been persuaded to move to Camp Zero, where the blooms 'service' the nearby important guests, and spy on its architect. Finally, there's Grant - who's travelled north for his own reasons, but namely to escape from his father and his family's name. He's been employed at Camp Zero to teach at a campus, but gets there to find it's merely a building site, and the only people he can teach right now are the unwilling builders.

They're all climate change survivors, trying to make sense of what the future might bring and what they want to do with it.

Heat is one enemy, but so is technology - everyone has got so used to watching their 'Flick' feed (via an implant) at all times, that their memories are beginning to fade. The egos of men in power is another.

Rose was a great character, but Grant felt as he might've benefited from a bit more depth. What did he really think was going to happen up north? And the women of White Alice were cool, but struggled to develop as separate individuals in my mind (their leader aside).

Overall, it's a thought-provoking, clever, interesting read, which is why I'm giving it a reasonably high star rating. But is also reads somewhat like it's setting up for a sequel - in fact, if one was available, I'd read it right now! If one never emerges though, there are some loose ends I'd really like to see a bit tidier.

I'll definitely be back for the author's next book - I enjoyed this one, but sometimes wanted just a little bit more from it.

It’s 2049 in North America and society as we know it has collapsed. Because of rising temperatures, the south has become unliveable. The fossil fuel industry is no more.

One of the most sought-after places to live is’The floating city’ where the elite have cocooned themselves. Life is a struggle for everyone else.

Camp zero is based near the former oil town of ‘Dominion Lake’ where an architect called Meyer is determined to build a new community and establish a way of living in this new world.

This is a book told from three perspectives. You have Rose, newly arrived at Camp Zero to work as a ‘Bloom’ and on a secret mission to help her‘employer back in the floating city. Grant has also travelled North on the promise of a job as a teacher at a ‘campus’ at Camp Zero, wanting to get as far away from his father as possible. And there’s a research building occupied by a group of women known as ‘White Alice’ who are there to monitor environmental changes - but we’re never quite sure when this particular storyline takes place.

These storylines do overlap and interweave, though to begin with it might seem like they are completely separate. The story and setup do take a while to get going but when they do ‘Camp zero’ has a good pace to it, eventually.

This is the second book I’ve read recently about the plundering of the world’s resources by unscrupulous investors. It seems to be becoming a popular genre and I suppose the best term to describe them is ‘Eco-thrillers’. With our anxieties about global warming increasing, it's a topic that will soon be moving into the horror category.

Even though living standards have deteriorated, in ‘Camp Zero’ people are still addicted to the internet. People use a device called a ‘flick’ which is basically an implant in your brain which you receive at birth and activate by flicking your ear. It means that users are never fully present, that memories are ultimately repressed, and it is the ultimate in data harvesting surveillance tools.

The scary thing is that it’s not so far fetched. It’s scarily close to some of the ideas explored in another book I read recently (Stolen Focus) where the ability to switch off your flick is a privilege enjoyed by the few.

I suppose one issue I had was with the number of flashbacks, which sometimes clogged up the pace of the novel. I get that they were necessary, especially in telling the back stories of Grant and Rose, but some of them got in the way for me.

Some of the background characters came to the fore late in the book, always a bit of a bugbear with me. And I would have liked to know more about the other ‘blooms’. One thing the book isn’t short of are strong women, exemplified by some of the blooms and members of the White Alice camp.

Rose is a good character and I had sympathy for her because of her background. I didn’t particularly warm to the character of Grant and found it hard to care about his issues with his wealthy father. Although some events, later on, shone a bit more light on his distaste for his dad, they didn’t make me like him any more.

I probably enjoyed the White Alice story threads more than anything else in the book. There was a pioneering spirit to the group, and even though it was told from a slightly different perspective, I was eager to know what happened to them.

I liked the fact that we can recognise this world - it’s on the other side of a societal and energy collapse, but much of it was familiar. It wasn’t dissimilar in this way to ’station eleven’ which was about a post-pandemic society operating after most of mankind had died, but they are two different books. 'Station eleven' was about connection, about finding beauty in art to sustain us - Camp Zero is more concerned with survival, and the importance of solidarity and working together in a small group. There’s a lot to be said for sisterhood and love.

I found this to be a solid dystopian sci-fi thriller. It’s well written, and has a good pace when it gets going, but I found it lost a bit of steam in the middle before picking up again towards the end. I wasn’t overly fussed with the ending, as it seems to set events up for a sequel, but it didn’t impact my enjoyment of the book. Definitely worth a read.

Well that was certainly a story. I'm not 100% sure I know what I just read, but I can tell you I enjoyed very little of it. The writing style worked for me (especially the White Alice sections), but the pacing was not good, the characters felt bizzare and flat, including Grant's perspective at all felt....off? I had to force myself to read this a few times (the last 30% or so picks up I suppose) because I just wasn't really interested in what was coming. I like the premise, I like the White Alice parts, and the story had good roots, but the execution felt empty somehow. Like we watched a story that ended where it started and nothing in the middle mattered much. Also that ending - was that sequel teasing? Or just deliberately open ended? It doesn't matter really, I don't like either option.

**Thank you NetGalley and John Murray Press for the eARC**

A dark dystopian novel set in the near future, written from three different view points I thoroughly enjoyed this book and loved the way the stories intertwined.

A chilling read, in more ways than one. A well-written, dystopian view of the not too distant future where global warming has not been brought under control, this book speculates about where this might lead. Horribly believable I am afraid. The multiple viewpoints of the book help to get across the message that there are all sorts of people with hidden agendas involved in the climate change ‘business’ at the level of those with power. The central story, set against this background, is fed to us slowly and only gradually does it become clear to us the readers, as it does to the central characters, what is really going on. A slow burner of a book, but worth going along for the ride.

This is another apocalyptic novel about the future (set in 2049) and, although good in parts, it sometimes tries to do too much! Rose, not her real name, is an escort for the superrich in a world where the oil has been turned off, climate change is a hot reality and the poor are suffering. She is allegedly dispatched with a group of other prostitutes, the Blooms, to service some rich clients in North America which is still cool climatically but, as it turns out, that is only part of her role.

Alongside this story a military group of women have also been dispatched to the North to a place called Camp Zero where they are to live for a year. They have specialised skills which come in useful as it transpires they are not meant to return!

Then, there is another story about a man called Grant employed by the superrich people in the North as an English teacher for the men working on the construction site which is not what it seems either.

The most significant rich client is a man called Meyer who is both idealistic and deluded about what is taking place as well as being serviced by Rose.

As the story emerges, it is hard to keep track of what is happening particularly as the timeframe moves in leaps and bounds and there are flashbacks to Rose’s earlier life as Nari.

For the most part, the women survive and to that extent this is a survivalist novel but it takes a long time and a fair number of grisly male deaths to achieve a satisfactory ending.