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Permafrost (SF) - Kate Kelly *****

As the title suggests, this new book from Kate Kelly is a kind of mirror-image counterpart to her earlier novel, The Arid Lands, from 2023. You can find my review of that one on Goodreads. Both feature futures where, owing to changes in the global climate, human society has become much more fragmented, with some communities retaining a higher degree of civilisation than others. In the first book, set in a hot, dry future, the range was roughly from the 1950s back to mediaeval times. In this one, set in a much bleaker, deep-frozen future, the mediaeval culture is actually the more modern one, beset on all sides by barbarian savagery. The plots of the two books have a mirror-image quality, too. The first one is about a late-teen female protagonist whose initial concern is simply to look after her slightly younger male sibling, but then ends up having to save the world virtually single-handed. Permafrost has a similar scenario, but with the genders reversed.

As far as the actual stories are concerned, there are similarities and differences. Ultimately, I found the differences more striking – particularly in tone – but their underlying themes are similar. Both novels revolve around the disastrous consequences of a massive geoengineering project that a previous generation rushed into without doing a proper risk assessment. The fault isn’t with the technology itself, or with evil people setting out to do evil things, but with single-minded idealists getting too fixated on solving one specific problem without thinking through all the negative consequences. In The Arid Lands the problems were relatively local, centred on the Mediterranean region, but in Permafrost – which is also set in southern Europe – they’re truly global.

The wider scope of the disaster in Permafrost – coupled with the fact that large parts of the world have reverted to an almost bestial level of barbarism – makes this a much darker novel. In my review of The Arid Lands, I said how its fast-moving, twisty plot and problem-solving female protagonist reminded me of point-and-click adventure games. That’s a cosily escapist genre, and cosy is one thing that Permafrost definitely isn’t. Although the hero is still trying to save the world, he goes about it in an action-oriented rather than problem-solving way. In fact many of the scenes have a decidedly sword-and-sorcery feel to them – a genre that was hugely popular when I was in my teens, and which I still have a soft spot for. The battle scenes are very well written, and unlike Kate Kelly’s previous protagonists, this one is alarmingly bloodthirsty. I lost count of the number of bad guys he enthusiastically decapitated or ran through with his sword.

This is not sword-and-sorcery fiction, however, as it has a good scientific rationale underlying it. And as with all the best science fiction – the written kind, I mean, not Hollywood movies – it sets you thinking. That’s good, because it makes you consider things you may never have thought about before, but it does have the downside that you end up spotting problems the author has conveniently ignored. I’m not enough of an expert to say for sure, but I think that in the scenario as it’s presented in the novel, there would be little if any plant life on the planet. While trees are regularly described as dead or dying, wouldn’t the same also be true of the smaller plants, grown in vast indoor greenhouses, that the city-dwellers use for food? And with a lack of plants, wouldn’t that disrupt the whole food chain for animals as well? If you’re anything like me, you see questions like this as adding to the story rather than distracting from it, because it’s forcing you to think about things that wouldn’t occur to you otherwise. So if you like your fiction to be maximally thought-provoking, do check out Permafrost – and The Arid Lands too, if you haven’t read it yet. They’re only a couple of pounds each on Kindle.

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