Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley (book review)
At the end of each monthly meeting of the rangers overseeing the reserves around the Blackwater Estuary, there is a ceremony called the ‘loss protocol’. It memorialises species that has just been declared extinct. In this novel of the same name, set about fifty years into our future, extinction is an unfortunate consequence of continued climate change. The idea of the loss protocol is a theme that runs throughout the narrative. It is not just the small things, like the already rare Lesser Lichen Case-bearer, an actual undistinguished moth, that have to be accepted as gone for ever, but larger things as well.
The central character is Marc Winters. After a turbulent few years, he has settled into the role of ranger for Cynsea Island. He lives on site in a narrow boat and among other things, supervises the birders and school parties that visit. One morning he finds a drifter, S, washed up on a mudbank. He helps him find temporary work with a friend who is a licenced gleaner, small holder and grows and sells weed, perfectly legal at this time. Then the life he has built begins to unravel. Winters gets a strange phone call, his boat is broken into and the slogan ‘THE INSTAUTATION IS COMING’ spray painted on the narrowboat. This is the start of him finding much of what he believed to be true, isn’t.
Eight years previously, the commune his elder sister Izzy was subverted by the charismatic Kasey Motte. It was Winter’s belief that with faith and shrooms (psychotropic mushrooms), deep dreamers could reset the world so that global warming and mass extinctions never occurred. It ended in tragedy and Winters had always believed that Izzy was amongst the dead. Now he is told that Izzy is alive and has been living under an assumed name in Scotland. From this point, the novel becomes a mystery thriller. Winters wants to find out what happened to his sister and allow her to survive the destruction of the commune, also where she is now, what caused her to break cover and why he has suddenly become a focus of attention.
With the help of S and various contacts, he begins to piece together the situation and finds himself being hunted by a group of deep dreamers who have taken on Motte’s mantle and believing they can still reset the planet through the use of the shrooms. But for that they need either Izzy or Winters. There is frustration, diversions and danger before the truth begins to emerge.
The first part of this novel sets up the background of climate change and a society that is adapting, foraging and the cultivation of allotments is widespread. There is an emphasis of locally produced materials, including ale. Smoking weed is societally acceptable. While this stays as a viable background, the ecological issues tend to take a back seat while Winters is searching for his sister and the truth about her relationship with Motte and the commune. Therein lies a dilemma. Exploration of the new world with its ingoing ecological issues needs the edge of the mystery to take it out of the gentle place in society that Winters has settled for.
The idea of the loss protocol doesn’t just apply to species of plants and animals that have been lost forever but also to aspects of human society. For Winters, it has been an acceptance of the loss of his sister, made more difficult in the eight years previously by press attention, for the sole reason that he is the brother of the woman who was at the centre of what was seen as a dangerous cult. He is on a journey towards acceptance of that loss.
There is a lot to like in this novel, especially that depiction of the society that has grown out of the devastations of climate change. It is not just little things that the loss protocol forces one to make adjustments for but also the losses that have to be made as society has to change to accommodate the new reality.
Pauline Morgan
July 2026
(pub: Gollancz, 2026. 367 page hardback. Price: £22.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-3996-3556-1)
check out website: https://store.gollancz.co.uk/products/loss-protocol