ARCTIC RISING by Tobias Buckell

Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it’s about to get even hotter. The Arctic ice cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the
massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean.

Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself—but in doing so, they have created a superweapon the likes of which the world has never seen.

Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard. She’s intent on capturing a smuggled nuclear weapon that has made it into the Polar Circle and bringing the smugglers to justice.

Anika finds herself caught up in a plot by a cabal of military agencies and corporations who want Gaia Corporation stopped. But when Gaia loses control of their superweapon, it will be Anika who has to decide the future of the world.

It looks like exactly what it’s meant to: a near-future eco/political-thriller. Bold; forboding. Nice, clean typeface. Though I’m sad to see Buckell temporarily leave his Xenowealth setting behind, he’s a smart guy who (if his blog‘s any indication) has the uncanny ability to take dense science and pare it down in a way that’s interesting and and easy to wade through to his readers without losing any of the meat of the issues (in this case, global warming and the general downward spiral of our home planet) discussed. Not my typical sort of novel, but with Buckell’s name attached to it, it’s a must-read.

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