What if the only hope for survival becomes the greatest threat?
From the brilliant, bestselling author of Child 44 comes a suspenseful and fast-paced novel about a colony of global apocalypse survivors seeking to reinvent civilisation under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
The world has fallen. Without warning, a mysterious and omnipotent force has claimed the planet for their own. There are no negotiations, no demands, no reasons given for their actions. All they have is a message: humanity has thirty days to reach the one place on Earth where they will be allowed to exist... Antarctica.
Cold People follows the journeys of a handful of those who endure the frantic exodus to the most extreme environment on the planet. But their goal is not merely to survive the present. Because as they cling to life on the ice, the remnants of their past swept away, they must also confront the urgent challenge: can they change and evolve rapidly enough to ensure humanity's future? Can they build a new society in the sub-zero cold?
Well. That's not exactly what I was expecting.
From the blurb I thought this was going to be a surivalist novel, with people struggling in the bleakest part of the world whether they are suited to it or not. What I got was - not that. I don't want to spoil the story, so I won't say where it goes, but it really surprised me.
The time jumps and things did put me off a little as well - I'm not the kind of reader who enjoys putting things like that together - but they weren't too bad, as they mostly focused on different people each time so the reader doesn't have to constantly reassess people. They were all very clearly marked as well, it's not the kind of story that makes you guess!
I'd like to have known more about the aliens, but I understand they weren't the point, they were just a device. I did have a suspicion about them but I'll never know if I was right or not! I'll just pretend I was.
This is certainly quite a tense read, but I was never on the edge of my seat - weirdly given the subject matter, I wasn't desperate to know what was going to happen next. I definitely did enjoy it though, it was nice to have a less paniced read.
Highly recommend, but be aware that what you think you're getting isn't what you're actually getting!
Cold People published in the UK on the 17th January (top image) and will publish in the US on the 7th February (lower image). I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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