In the future of Tobias S. Buckell's Arctic Rising, climate change is real, it's happened, and the Arctic Circle has been transformed into a global center of commerce and economic power. When Anika Duncan's airship is shot down during a routine shipping flyover and her partner killed, she decides to figure out just what is going on and who is responsible.
Anika's search for revenge leads her to Violet, an independent businesswoman (and drug dealer) educated on the mean streets of Siberia who becomes Anika's main love interest, and Prudence, a dashing young mercenary-spy from the Caribbean with a knack for crowdsourcing and hacking--along with his obvious skill with boats and handguns. They're also the founders of a global corporation--Gaia--hell-bent on reversing the global warming trend, and threatening the companies and governments who control the newly uncovered oilfields.
Buckell's characters are convincing in their actions and apparent motivations, and the environments of Arctic Rising familiar to a modern audience yet still slightly foreign, with a ring of third-world authenticity. Anika is a multiracial lesbian aeronautical pilot, but her Nigerian ancestry and sexual orientation merely inform her character rather than overwhelm the story. Though occasional passages read like expository infodumps, for the most part, Buckell's story takes precedence over the whiz-bang ideas. The result is a human-sized tale of global politics and speculative technology that shows off the worldbuilding skills of a confident science fiction author. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor