In a future devastated by climate collapse, a secret library is destroyed and a teenage girl gifted with perfect memory becomes the last refuge of human knowledge, hunted by those in power as she fights to save the last hope for humanity. The searing, unforgettable conclusion to the internationally acclaimed The Forcing trilogy.
`A superbly handled tale of struggle and survival in a maimed world´ The Times
‘Utterly compelling … a masterful and all-too-recognisable portrait of climate collapse and the politics of greed. We need this book now more than ever’ Eve Smith
‘Paul Hardisty is a visionary' Luke McCallin
‘A riveting eco-thriller’ Crime Fiction Lover
**New Scientist Best Books for January 2026***
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The year is 2082. Climate collapse, famine and war have left the world in ruins. In the shadow of the Alpha-Omega regime – descendants of the super-rich architects of disaster – sixteen-year-old Boo Ashworth and her uncle risk everything to save what’s left of human knowledge, hiding the last surviving books in a secret library beneath the streets of Hobart.
But Boo has a secret of her own: an astonishing ability to memorise entire texts with perfect recall. When the library is discovered and destroyed, she’s forced to flee – armed with nothing but the stories she carries in her mind, and a growing understanding of her family’s true past.
Hunted and alone, and with the help of some unlikely allies, she must fight to save her loved ones – and bring hope to a broken world.
Spanning three generations before, during and after the fall, The Hope is the shattering conclusion to Paul E. Hardisty’s critically acclaimed climate-emergency trilogy – a devastating, visionary thriller that dares to imagine the possibility of redemption in the face of near-total collapse. In a dying world, it asks the most urgent question of all: what if there’s still time?
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'Smart, gripping, and all too plausible … announces Paul E. Hardisty as the true heir to John Christopher' Tim Glister
'Hardisty is a fine writer' Lee Child
'A compelling, moving story of survival in a dying world … a novel that might have actually predicted our future' Ewan Morrison
`The book I've been waiting and hoping for…´ Paul Waters
‘Hardisty holds a mirror up to the titans of today’s very real world problems … very plausible and terrifyingly so’ SciFi Now
What readers are saying:
‘Shocking, powerful and eye-opening … what a book!’
‘I couldn’t put this down … The Hope is both terrifying and reassuring’
‘We need more fiction like this’
‘The author's prose is often lyrical, almost poetic, even when describing the harshest realities’
‘This is dystopian fiction at its most effective: not spectacle, but warning’
‘A sobering, thought-provoking and deeply affecting novel, and a fitting, unforgettable conclusion to a remarkable trilogy’
‘Laced with danger and tension. So many scenes that exist right on a knife edge, that kind of pulse thumping tension that just compelled me to keep reading onward’
‘A stark, shocking, evocative and ultimately thought-provoking book that deserves to be shared widely’
‘A reminder that things are not too late to be turned around if we care enough to make changes’
About the Author :
Canadian Paul E Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).
The first four novels in his Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying,The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution all received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Telegraph Thriller of the Year. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.
