It’s detailed and centred on a soft, compassionate hero surrounded by characters you grow to love. The novel offers an interesting blend of dystopian, sci-fi, and cli-fi elements, all steeped in questions of how we treat one another, access and intellectual freedom, and the desperation that drives people. Through the main character, the idea of resisting without losing compassion comes through clearly. -nrk
336 pages
2024
Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.