I loved The Power (the novel, I haven’t been able to get into the TV series), which is why I requested this book. And this book was okay - a group of billionaires have an ‘escape plan’ for when the world is likely to implode. However, it sometimes felt as if there was a bit too much going on. I am not quite sure what the chat room posts about Sodom and Gomorrah added, I found myself zoning out during these sections.

The characters are not likeable, but I think that is to be expected with the subject matter. The book gave no idea of timescale - I was surprised, at the closing chapters of the book, to find out how much time had allegedly passed.

The ending - less a twist, more of a disappointment. It just didn’t sit right with where the book felt it was going.

This is an okay book.

Following The Power, this needed to be a strong offering and it was a good read but didn't quite match up to the previous success. That said, my husband and I both read it and it sparked really interesting discussions so definitely one for a fulfilling book group read.

This was an interesting futuristic read. I thought it could do with additional editing but I liked the different characters point of view and the world building.

Thank you for the advanced reader copy.

It takes a while to get going, and found I lost interest in some parts. That being said towards the mid/end of the story I was hooked and needed to keep reading.
The plot was an interesting take on the end of the world but was easy to get lost in the various ideas and characters throughout.
Overall I enjoyed The Future and look forward to reading more Naomi Alderman books.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read.

Quite poorly executed in my personal opinion. This had so much potential but was let down by the writing style/prose.

This is a story that could definitely become the future! Technology "leaders", climate change, the have's and have nots. The twists and turns kept me gripped.

This novel gives a glimpse into a possible near future, when technology moguls rule a world that has been destroyed by greed and climate change. Despite trying to create a better world, money still has the loudest voice and all is not as it seems on the surface. This dystopian book is full of twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat whilst providing a stark message about social media and the fragmentation/polarisation of society. A great read!

Hello! I had actually already bought and read this book and really enjoyed reading it. It's engaging and I like the overall message and how the plot is more character-driven. I also enjoy how the author balances serious topics with bits of humour and romance.

I have added a link to my video review. It got 60 views in the first ten minutes and currently has 200+

Thank you!

Certainly a very thought-provoking and unnerving read. I didn't always understand the technological and religious narrative but a book that could provoke some interesting conversations.

So disappointing. The Power Jaime of my favourite books so I was really looking forward to this, yet it was a struggle to get through it. It feels like five different people wrote it, and two of them were a computer programmer and some sort of biologist. I like a bit of information about things I’m unfamiliar with as part of the world building, but I don’t want to read chapter long tangents. This book could have been a third of the size. Do not recommend.

What if the future involved catastrophic events, and what if the world’s richest people had made their own plans to escape the chaos? We find ourselves in the late 2030s, after the Fall of Hong Kong, with a world dominated by three major tech companies and their avaricious CEOs. Naomi Alderman’s world building is excellent as she details the fundamentalist cult one of the main characters grew up in. This is another creative and readable novel from Alderman (I loved The Power), which tackles interesting subjects and jumps around in time and location, but the final twist was predictable and the characters a bit one dimensional.

I couldn’t get enough of The Future by Naomi Alderman. This book pressed all of my Sci-Fi/ Speculative fiction/ dystopian buttons ALL AT ONCE!!

I’m not actually sure how I should explain this… There’s so much going on in this book - doomsday preppers with an awful lot of money, climate breakdown and pollution, social media influencers.

Actually, that doesn’t explain half of it.

This is the story of a heist. A pretty daring one, and one that could so easily fail, but in order to save the future, a group of friends decide that they will have to do something to protect the world from three of the most powerful and influential billionaires.

The story is told in punchy, short chapters, interspersed with excerpts from a chatroom ( I loved these parts - I didn’t think I would to begin with, but I really enjoyed them). This style really propels the story forward. Actually, the STORY propels the story forward.

Look, I just really, really loved this book, and I think you should go and read it. Ok?

I gave this book 3.5 stars.

I enjoyed the plot although it was a bit heavy handed and predictable. The characters were also pretty great.

It but didn't quite have the same wow factor as The Power although I appreciated the author going to efforts to be more trans inclusive.

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‘The Future’ by Naomi Alderman is a thrilling novel that I found thoroughly enthralling. The story takes place in the future where we follow three tech billionaire’s. (I wonder who she might have based them on!) The tech billionaire’s have their bunkers ready so when there’s a cataclysmic event which could destroy much of the human race they make their escape.
It does have an overload of ideas and themes but it’s an incredible read that I highly recommend.

"The Future is a handful of friends—the daughter of a cult leader, a non-binary hacker, an ousted Silicon Valley visionary, the concerned wife of a dangerous CEO, and an internet-famous survivalist—hatching a daring plan. It could be the greatest heist ever. Or the cataclysmic end of civilization."

This book took me on a roller coaster of a plot and counter plot always believable and slightly terrifying!

As a commentary of how the world is run it was chilling and as a story it was clever and kept me engaged.

This is an amazing book. It kept me away from my sleep for too many hours. I was intrigued by the somewhat eccentric characters and the insights in a world that is depressingly similar to what will or is currently occurring. I loved the way technology affects humans lives, but emotional decisions are what drives the plot. I loved the twists (except the last one, which I thought was a bit too much). The thing I did not like was the fact that the whole world's existence and its ability to thrive seem to depend on the decision of a handful of people. And since these people are egoistic, if not evil, then the world is not going to be saved. Reality is a bit more complex than that, people respond to incentives, and nobody is evil per se (ok, maybe with a few exceptions). But beside this point, I loved this book!

You might know Naomi Alderman from her smash hit book ‘The Power’, where women developed the ability to mete out electric shocks to oppressors and society shifted accordingly: you might have sprinted around our city to Zombies, Run!, the now ten-year-old exercise adventure app for which she provided storylines. But even if these sentences are your first encounter with Alderman’s work, you should immediately put her newest book to the top of your reading list. The story opens in the disturbingly-possible moments just after the big tech billionaires have been alerted to the imminent end of the world, thanks to the AI and statistics software which they own – but crucially for these CEOs and their loved ones, it is still days before society at large will become aware of the encroaching disaster. This advance notice gives the executives enough time to get to the bunkers they’ve been building for precisely this moment – but in the background, a few of their closest associates have been quietly wondering if the decisions and attitudes of these industry leaders might be the very reason society is now facing collapse. Is there anything they can do to alter what seems to be an inevitable future? Strap yourself in for this absolutely gripping thriller which confronts issues around artificial intelligence, power-hoarding and wealth imbalance – and get ready for the mother of all twists.

Featured in the January 2024 issue of Cambridge Edition Magazine – digital version linked below

Naomi Alderman always writes good. The well-developed characters made it impossible for me to put down, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Overall, it's an easy and enjoyable read that I would highly recommend.. This dystopian novel reflects our own world back at us. It’s uncomfortable, but clever and thought provoking.

Absolutely brilliant. Uncomfortable to read because of the dystopian nature of it, so I did put it down quite a few times. However, it is so well written, definitely worth it! I enjoyed The Power a lot when it came out, and this was different but also really enjoyable

he sirens sound in the street. The lockdown order comes. The images on the television are of chaos and illness, total societal collapse. The apocalypse is here, and where are the rich? Already holed up in their survival compounds, ready to ride out the end of the world before emerging to take control of what’s left of it for themselves.

Billionaire preppers and their plans for Bond-villain bunkers have now pervaded the public imagination to the extent that this year we have two novels dealing with the phenomenon. First there was Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, which took inspiration from Peter Thiel’s efforts to build a bunker in New Zealand. Now, Naomi Alderman’s The Future picks up on the idea with a near-future narrative about the secret survival plans of three global tech tycoons...

Full review: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-last-battle-the-future-by-naomi-alderman-reviewed/