Business-centered SF about managing a drought-choked world that works at a slow boil.
In Greunke’s novel, the global distribution of fresh water on an Earth devastated by climate change relies on two oligarchic families.
In the future, scorching, lethal heat waves bear names like tropical storms, and fresh water has become a valuable, limited commodity (akin to fuel oil) for most of the planet. In a poorly understood meteorological quirk, rainwater now falls in continuous cascades in only two places: Southeast Asia and Africa. In these areas, two once-humble families manage to control a global water-distribution network, dividing the parched population between themselves as clients. The Seng family of Cambodia is led by patriarch Preap, who says, “Water is not a luxury. It is a right. My success is built upon my obligation to bring water to the world as cheaply as possible.” The Sengs are on friendly terms with their peers, the Labonnes of Ivory-Coast Africa. Preap’s fabulously privileged son and heir Kasemchai Seng (who can buy a whole distillery on a whim because he enjoys their liquor) has a casual sexual relationship with Angélique Labonne, daughter of water-tycoon Philippe, who styles himself as a religious leader and broadcasts sermons on God’s role in all of this. Despite his playboy exterior, Kasemchai yearns to do something truly great. When he meets attractive Dutch energy engineer Liv Anselm, they collaborate to replace filthy diesel-oil engines used on water tankers with sustainable solar electricity and rechargeable batteries. Kasemchai encounters unexpected resistance and treachery when he floats the scheme with the aged water barons, who start seeming far less benevolent after this challenge to their established order. First-time author Greunke crossbreeds “cli-fi” SF with the “business novel” genre, in which quests for investors, product rollouts, and the occasional corporate-sabotage crisis provide the drama—such concerns receive more emphasis in Greunke’s yarn than incidents like the harrowing depiction of heatstroke death that raises the curtain here. The reader is occasionally reminded of how high the stakes are, but this is talk-heavy material in which maneuvering in an elite CEO conference propels the climax. Still, the narrative is disquietingly persuasive; read with a cool beverage on hand for best effect.
Business-centered SF about managing a drought-choked world that works at a slow boil.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798991868211
Page Count: 396
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically charged tour de force by one of the best living novelists in English.
A gravely post-apocalyptic tale that blends mystery with the academic novel.
McEwan’s first narrator, Thomas Metcalfe, is one of a vanishing breed, a humanities professor, who on a spring day in 2119, takes a ferry to a mountain hold, the Bodleian Snowdonia Library. The world has been remade by climate change, the subject of a course he teaches, “The Politics and Literature of the Inundation.” Nuclear war has irradiated the planet, while “markets and communities became cellular and self-reliant, as in early medieval times.” Nonetheless, the archipelago that is now Britain has managed to scrape up a little funding for the professor, who is on the trail of a poem, “A Corona for Vivien,” by the eminent poet Francis Blundy. Thanks to the resurrected internet, courtesy of Nigerian scientists, the professor has access to every bit of recorded human knowledge; already overwhelmed by data, scholars “have robbed the past of its privacy.” But McEwan’s great theme is revealed in his book’s title: How do we know what we think we know? Well, says the professor of his quarry, “I know all that they knew—and more, for I know some of their secrets and their futures, and the dates of their deaths.” And yet, and yet: “Corona” has been missing ever since it was read aloud at a small party in 2014, and for reasons that the professor can only guess at, for, as he counsels, “if you want your secrets kept, whisper them into the ear of your dearest, most trusted friend.” And so it is that in Part 2, where Vivien takes over the story as it unfolds a century earlier, a great and utterly unexpected secret is revealed about how the poem came to be and to disappear, lost to history and memory and the coppers.
A philosophically charged tour de force by one of the best living novelists in English.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804728
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
