Cold People: From the multi-million copy bestselling author of Child 44

Product Information

When the aliens arrive, Liza and Atto are forced to quickly take steps to save their own lives and those of their families. Marooned in a place that humanity was never designed to live, with the limited supplies that could be gathered in the rushed exodus, this is a story of man starting from scratch and adapting to their new circumstances. Liza is an American, on holiday in Portugal, when she meets Atto, and their relationship is interesting, and we watch it develop through this crisis. The problem is that Smith only does world-building - he forgets to include a narrative with any drive.

And of course, speculating about each of their futures, but I was wrong on all accounts (which is great, who wants a book to be predictable? Hope Town functions on a basis of community care and mutual aid whereas McMurdo City is more martial and operates like the governing structures we’re accustomed to. Though he isn't present in every scene, he conveys each piece of the story leading up to the murder as if he were an omniscient narrator, capable of accessing every character's interior perspective. Once he starts doing things though, Eitan steals the show and the novel ends in a semi-interesting way - except it’s a case of too little, too late, and I’d stopped caring long before that point.Shortly after Liza and Atto step foot on Antarctica we catch our breath and can’t help but feel for them of the hopelessness of their predicament. I’ve read the author’s novels set in Stalinist Russia and The Farm and i was interested in this because it sounded like such a departure from hi earlier work and I’m glad I did.

What follows was unexpected because, unlike most novels dealing with an apocalypse, the focus is not on why the invasion has happened or how humanity fights back against them. An armada of alien spacecraft has invaded Earth and given humankind exactly 30 days to move to Antarctica. Did the scientists succeed in creating a hybrid human that will perpetuate the human race, or did they simply create yet another monster of ambition, vainglorious selfishness and greed? The aliens referred to in the synopsis are really no more than a McGuffin and after they have set the plot in motion they don’t appear again and are only referenced in passing so if you’re looking for conventional SF you may want to try something else.

After those humans who did not make the deadline are vaporised by the aliens, the remainder, a couple of million people, must make a new home in a hostile environment with what they have brought and what they can adapt from their surroundings. Characters have almost no interiority, and when they do, it's super-clunky, script notes rather than emotion: 'When he finally opened his eyes, he was crying.

Cold People follows the journeys of a handful of those who endure the frantic exodus to the most extreme environment on the planet. We also find that the scientists have been working with genetics to make people that are more adapted for the cold. Characters just putz about in the world and the novel stalls and dies under layers and layers of unending description! the first half covers humanities initial reaction to being told they have just 30 days to travel to the most inhospitable region on Earth, Antarctica, or risk being annihilated, and how they make that journey. The plotting style reminded me of Matthew Reilly, and I know you'll be thinking "that's probably because of Ice Station", but actually it's because of the action in The Great Zoo of China.On arrival, they face the grim task of finding ways to exist in the frozen, barren land with few resources.

The concept of Cold People appealed to me as it featured topics I enjoy, including survival in a post-apocalyptic world, mysterious alien contact, the Antarctic, and establishing new societies under challenging circumstances. Under the ice, there are mountains of minerals that would allow humankind to thrive and build new cities. They set up homes and laboratories using spare parts cannibalised from the ships and planes on which they travelled. They have been locked up throughout their life for the safety of the scientists, staff and the entire McMurdo City. I have read other reviews which say that the characters in this book were underdeveloped and they could make no connection with them.

Needless to say there is a great panic to get to the inhospitable ice world where there is any chance of survival.