• Arctic Rising, by Tobias S. Buckell

  • Living Proof, by Kira Peikoff

  • Enormity by W.G. Marshall



Arctic Rising

by Tobias S. Buckell (Tor)

Tobias Buckell hasn’t written a warning about climate change. It’s too late for that. Instead he tells a story about the wild frontier of the North Pole.

Anika Duncan left Nigeria to escape violence for a safer life — as a pilot for the United Nations Polar Guard. She patrols the open Arctic seas for illegal dumping of dangerous waste. But her plane is shot down when she spots a ship with a highly radioactive cargo. After she is rescued, someone is still trying to kill her. The people she counted on aren’t helping, so she sets out on her own to find the truth behind a nuclear weapon that has now vanished.

The clues lead north to the frontier of Thule. Governments are going all out to stop the Gaia Corp.’s new environmental plan. The nuclear weapon Anika is chasing is somehow in the middle of this. The stakes increase to include the whole world’s future while the questions of who to believe or trust grow more clouded.

Anika picks up interesting allies on her journey north. “Arctic Rising” is a very good classic spy thriller set in an exotic location. A location that exists only because of the drastic changes in our planet’s climate.

Living Proof

by Kira Peikoff (Tor)

In 2027 the Department of Embryo Protection is in charge of ensuring fertility clinics can account for all of their fertilized embryos. All the embryos that are not implanted in the mother must be preserved or the clinic doctors will be charged with murder.

Arianna Drake runs a fertility clinic in New York. She is also supplying embryos for illegal stem-cell research. She has a personal interest in finding a cure for her own degenerative disease. She thinks they are fooling the DEP, but they have noticed the unusual number of embryos at Arianna’s lab.

Trent Rowe is a former investigative reporter who left journalism for an unsatisfying job with the DEP. He finds radical signs in Arianna’s past indicating support for forbidden research. He is assigned to go undercover and get close enough that she will reveal her secrets. Instead he finds love and a crisis of faith.

“Living Proof” is a thriller based not just on controversial ideas but fundamental philosophical differences. Peikoff is a former journalist who got the idea for her first novel while covering George W. Bush’s veto of federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. Her novel avoids presidential politics and concentrates on a few well-developed characters.


by W.G. Marshall (Night Shade).

Manny Lopes isn’t happy with his life. He considers himself a “Creole shrimp.”

His job in Korea keeps him from his wife. She is in the United States and tired of their dead relationship. He enjoys his time with his co-worker Karen but she has had enough. That all changes when he tries to be a good Samaritan and interfere in a robbery atempt. The stolen merchandise comes from an American physics lab. When it breaks open, some quantum hocus-pocus goes on, and Manny becomes over a mile tall.

Manny doesn’t know what has happened and causes a lot of damage stumbling over Korea. Manny doesn’t intend to harm anyone. The same can’t be said for the various once-little micro- organisms on his body that have grown into large, vicious creatures. Everything about his body is dangerous to humans close to it.

There are some annoying gnats he has to swat away. With all of those planes knocked aside the U.S. military is running out of ideas for stopping Manny. They are saved by a phone call. When Manny exploded in height, Karen ended up a tiny passenger on his huge head. A rescue expedition lands on Manny with equipment to set Karen up in Manny’s eardrum to speak to him.

Not that they have Manny’s best interests at heart. They see him as a decisive weapon who has to be brought to their side.

“Enormity” updates the giant monster movies of the ’50s in all aspects from sex to geopolitics. Manny is a monster we can care about as he tries to adjust to his new reality.

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