Science Fiction Saturday: New Paul McAuley Novel!

I continue to beat the drums for Paul McAuley, the best science fiction writer you've never heard of. I am happy to report that McAuley has a new novel out--Austral--and it looks like a good one. Here's the description:

The great geoengineering projects have failed.The world is still warming, sea levels are still rising, and the Antarctic Peninsula is home to Earth's newest nation, with life quickened by ecopoets spreading across valleys and fjords exposed by the retreat of the ice.Austral Morales Ferrado, a child of the last generation of ecopoets, is a husky: an edited person adapted to the unforgiving climate of the far south, feared and despised by most of its population. She's been a convict, a corrections officer in a labour camp, and consort to a criminal, and now, out of desperation, she has committed the kidnapping of the century. But before she can collect the ransom and make a new life elsewhere, she must find a place of safety amongst the peninsula's forests and icy plateaus, and evade a criminal gang that has its own plans for the teenage girl she's taken hostage.Blending the story of Austral's flight with the fractured history of her family and its role in the colonisation of Antarctica, Austral is a vivid portrayal of a treacherous new world created by climate change, and shaped by the betrayals and mistakes of the past.

The novel is set in the same future as McAuley's excellent story, "Elves of Antarctica" which was in Jonathan Strahan's cli-fi anthology from last year, Drowned Worlds (also recommended). Austral is not yet out in the States but can easily be ordered from Amazon anyway. Go for it.