Arctic Rising by Tobias Buckell

Just finished Arctic Rising by Tobias Buckell.  Gotta say it.  Pretty good book.  I was a little worried for the first half or so; it seemed like a run-of-the-mill chase/mystery.  Mostly the mystery of why our protagonist is being chased.  But then he pulled it out of the fire and I realized that he was doing something really interesting with both the story and the characters.

In writing classes, you hear about the stereotype of the protagonist a lot.  What that means is that, in general, you imagine the hero of the story to be a lot like you.  I think Buckell blew up every stereotype I have with Anika, the star of the story.  Female, Nigerian, lesbian . . . you name it.  Yet Buckell never let those things overwhelm the character; she was her own voice within the story.  And don't get me started with the Russian druglord (sounds like a cliche, doesn't it?  But it ISN'T!), the Caribbean spy (who would've thunk it?) and the strippers-with-guns.  Suffice it to say, his characters are rarely cardboard cutouts.

And the story.  Whew.  The STORY!  I have never really rooted for the end of the world the way I have in this book, and Buckell makes that okay, because this is eco sci-fi, a new niche in the genre popularized by Paolo Bacigalupi (of Windup Girl fame).  The world is a different place; the ice caps have melted (yep, they're gone) and most of Canada has opened for exploitation.  This has made a lot of the smaller, northern countries a lot wealthier and a lot more powerful.  Where wealth and power combine, there is some serious interest in keeping the status as quo as it can be.  So what happens when someone wants to put the world back the way it was?  That's what you're going to find out in Arctic Rising, and I think (no, I'm pretty sure) you're going to love finding out.