I like dystopian science fiction, and I like books set near where I live. I see the Redcar wind farm pretty often and I think it looks awesome, and I love the idea that the North Sea is really not even that deep and it had humans living all over it not even that long ago: and so I thought I'd be primed to like Doggerland. But I didn't.

Because I don't like books that promise to go somewhere and then don't; I don't like books that pose questions like what happened to humanity or what happened to this guy's dad and refuse to even hint towards answers. I'm ok with you won't learn the truth but not learning the truth is the point; I don't like always going back to Infinite Jest but the whole point of Infinite Jest lies beyond the front and back covers of the book and it's still like my favourite book ever. Doggerland draws a lot of comparisons to The Road, which I wasn't a big fan of either.

I like straightforward prose, which Ben Smith does do a bunch of; but interspersed with the story there are short chapters describing how Doggerland was reflooded thousands of years ago, and these have all the hallmarks of bad AI writing, e.g.:

The only sound was the crackle of frozen mud and ice rind, which was the water, down to its very molecules, repeating its mantra: solidity is nothing but an interruption to continuous flow, an obstacle to be overcome, an imbalance to be rectified.