Book Review: They Could Be Saviors

Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

This unputdownable drama kidnaps billionaires and takes them to a psychedelic-fueled wellness retreat to solve the climate crisis.

“Could this be a meeting of the minds to bring us something really big?” The news report asks, when five of the wealthiest, most influential men in the world disappeared with no sign of struggle or break-in. “Are we looking at abduction? Should we be expecting ransom demands?… Other wealthy people around the world must be on high alert—what can they do to protect themselves?” The suspense is strong and continues throughout. We spend highly emotional days with the women holding the billionaires captive at a super-high-tech wellness spa. And it’s all part of a mysterious, psychedelic plan to solve the climate crisis.

Author Diana Colleen’s introduction to the billionaires is sharp perfection, the men confidently monologuing about topics like: “Rising sea levels? Not his problem. If he was honest, which was rare, he didn’t give a shit about the planet.” When an employee asks her billionaire boss: “Don’t you have enough?” his outraged response is revealing: “Enough? The concept was laughable. Empires weren’t built on enough. “There’s no such thing, Susan. And if you think saving a few trees is going to make a difference, I have some iceberg water to sell you. You don’t stay at the top by doing what’s moral.”

Diana Colleen does a fantastic job depicting these billionaires as despicable, arrogant men. As soon as they learn that their kidnappers are women, their instinct to sexualize and manipulate them kicks in. Reading chapters from their perspective is grating and cliche and yet completely realistic. Colleen nails the writing, to the point where it feels like you’re in the presence of someone exactly as irritating as this.

“Humans are the only animals who hoard wealth while others die; we think that’s an illness.” They Could Be Saviors‘ protagonists, the kidnappers, have diagnosed billionaireism as an illness, for which they have a cure: They use super-specialized technology and plans to convince them to engage in guided psychedelic therapeutic sessions (using mushrooms, MDMA, etc.). Their enlightening visions could change their hearts, cure them of this billionaire-illness, and allow phase two of the kidnappers’ plan to kick in.

There’s great humor here, like when the wealthy tech titans cannot even comprehend that they were kidnapped for anything other than a product launch: “Maybe he was being enlisted to aid in the dissemination of these groundbreaking technologies. If so, he couldn’t help but be enthusiastic. However, the elaborate measures taken to involve him seemed unnecessary. They could’ve just picked up the damn phone.” Even when it’s clear that they’re captives and the planet-saving aims are explained, using the futuristic tech available at this kidnapping-wellness spa has dollar signs flashing in the billionaire’s minds, as if they can’t help it. Even while cooperating under duress, they “imagined the possibilities: the untapped market, the potential partnerships, the unimaginable profits.”

This story is gripping and engages both the heart and mind. As readers, you’re entirely invested in what’s going on and tuned in to see how everyone will react. There’s a thrill in watching these privileged, powerful men scramble to cope with a different power dynamic, their daily lives at the will of the women. Outside of drug therapy sessions, the billionaires continually (upon their arrival and throughout their kidnapping) receive microdoses of a new drug without their knowledge or consent. This new drug is engineered specifically “to suppress impulses toward anger, violence, or escape. To keep the wealth-hoarding dragons compliant.” When they inform the men, though, the women claim the drug is used because “it allows you to let your guard down and be more relaxed.”

Once the men agree to their psychedelic trips, their sessions reveal distressing, emotional childhoods. The women have equally dark pasts, which surface differently for each of them as they share why they agreed to this project. We read about devastating grief, a spouse’s death by suicide, and flashbacks to abusive trauma. Much of the story follows the emotions of the group: We are fascinated by the tense group dynamics between the women facilitating the kidnapping experience (essentially, an isolated confinement to a super-high-tech wellness retreat designed for each man’s comfort, complete with a personalized assistant catering to your needs). Through the men’s psychedelic visions, we learn about each billionaire’s painful, lonely, grief-stricken, misunderstood childhood. The women offer a nuanced, refreshingly vulnerable side to the story, but it’s difficult to emotionally connect to the men’s stories, knowing that they’re being used to justify who the billionaires grew up to be. Still, it is part of the journey.

Even with all its unleashing of restrained childhood trauma, They Could Be Saviors doesn’t exactly confront the scale of disregard for human life that it takes to speak of your empire so casually and proudly. Diana Colleen maintains the mystery of phase two perhaps for too long, leaving us to imagine heights the narrative cannot reach: How will their newfound enlightenment save the planet?

In some ways, this inventive, intriguing novel’s solutions to the climate crisis don’t seem to do the job they set out to do. They’ve forced this once-in-a-lifetime confrontation with the powerful men who could enact real change. The kidnappers’ understanding of both climate change and what it takes to become a billionaire goes somewhat un-interrogated, offering some surface-level solutions. When the billionaires are forced to come up with a plan to solve the climate crisis, they discuss shifting policies and mindsets with other influential CEOs, without comprehending that they shouldn’t have this much influence over governments in the first place.

Where the book loses its edge is that instead of using this opportunity to force the billionaires to face and end their complicity in the climate crisis, it positions them as brilliant minds who run in influential circles and simply need their “talents to be used for the good of all” by coming up with a plan. We kind of end up back where we started: needing to kick a plan into action. I wonder: Why wouldn’t this set-up force these people to reckon with the idea of stripping their wealth, power, and influence? By focusing on their formative childhood trauma and the transformative power of psychedelic trips, They Could Be Saviors doesn’t give time to wealth distribution or limiting the expansion of the destructive global systems that benefit billionaires.

Thought-provoking and thrilling all the same, They Could Be Saviors will inspire imaginative conversation about how we should confront the global climate crisis that the existence of billionaires create. After the kidnappers’ extreme actions (and a shocking, dramatic twist that threw everything up in the air!) aiming to achieve something planet-saving, I hold onto hope that They Could Be Saviors‘s readers will find some enlightenment and the appropriate rage by meeting these billionaires in such an intimate setting.

I would recommend this book to open-minded readers looking for a rollercoaster ride of emotion that pulls on their heartstrings and taps into their desire for billionaires to take responsibility for solving this problem. If you’re the kind of person who gets into debates on how to save the economy, talks out loud to fictional characters when they’re making bad decisions, and knows exactly what you’d do if you were president for a day, this is the book for you.

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