IMBER

On a future Earth ravaged by storms and human-caused environmental disasters, survivors question an authoritarian ruler’s plans to resettle on a more habitable planet.

In Mistina’s SF debut, centuries of pollution, war, mass extinctions, and climate change have rendered Earth a seismically unstable, storm-plagued world. Most of the surviving human population has retreated to reinforced underground complexes. Only a few optimistic outliers persist on the temperamental surface, such as Violet Murphy, a biochemist who took over her parents’ experimental-organic farm after they perished in a freak squall. A police state government has repressed religion, nationalism, private gun ownership, and everything else blamed for taking civilization to this regrettable condition. Now, it advocates giving up on Earth entirely and relocating to a distant, habitable planet, but the exact details of the enormous project are maddeningly vague to Violet and the few other citizens who still question the power structure. Violet’s new associates (ex-hunter Jack, IT specialist/hacker Mason, beautiful scholar Emily) all gravitated to her when they met online discussing their peculiar telepathic links to animals. Now, they share their discomfort with a particularly invasive “census” and Violet’s interrogation (and apparent drugging) at a government science facility. Mason penetrates computer networks to investigate the ominous “Project Noah” while romantic sparks fire between Violet and Jack. Meanwhile, the nameless, ruthless president and his fascistic followers strike back against the small cell of dissidents. The plot is a slow burn of mounting anxiety and paranoia. Readers of conspiracy-oriented thrillers may not be terribly surprised by where the dystopic plot is going, but Mistina does not take easy or reassuring ways out. The animal-communication angle avoids being overdone or coming off as silly and adds welcome poignancy. Occasionally, a winking reference to fantasy/SF literature (“The sprawling swamp would have surely been too treacherous and disorienting without a Sméagol to guide them”) pops up in this otherwise sobering narrative of a seemingly inevitable slide toward a selfish, nihilistic apocalypse.

A grim futuristic eco-dystopia positing an especially dire outcome.