I recently bought a new kindle after my old one broke. For some reason I was unable to download this title from the cloud onto my kindle, therefore I will be unable to review this title. I am sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Okay the main story kept me reading. Loved it but didn't get the reason for the short story the girl was reading. Would have liked a better ending but still would read more of Austral.

This book is really not for me. Apologies. I just can't get to grips with the writing style. Thank you. It seems promising but doesn't hold my attention.

I loved this book. Already being familiar with the area of the world where it's set helps - but this is definitely not today's world. And wonder of wonders - in massive contrast with the disappointment of the year, Artemis, Paul McAuley writes one hell of a female protagonist.
Engineered to be strong, tall, and big, Austral still remains feminine! The only criticism she faces is based on her "husky" status - the world was quick to deny them full humanity, and the depths of the discrimination they face as a result was thoughtfully and thoroughly well done.
Speaking of the world - this is definitely an eco dystopia, though a habitable Antarctica really does appeal. If only it could be done without wholesale extinctions and sacrificing the ice caps.

One to absolutely pick up - one of my favourites of 2017.

There's a trend at the moment for 'cli-fi' - fiction dealing with climate change, its impact on the world and its consequences. Paul McAuley is the latest to join the trend with Austral, (review copy from Gollancz).

The titular Austral is a husky - genetically altered to thrive in the harsh environment of a settled and terraformed Antarctic that has been made habitable by climate change. Huskies were created by the ecopoets - a radical sect of environmentalists committed to creating a new, biologically diverse Antactica. But their vision for ecodiversity and sustainable slow change is not one that meshes with the need for immediate profit form the corporate entities exploiting Antarctica. The genetic modifications that huskies have undergone are viewed with suspicion by unmodified humans, and they are treated as second class citizens, subject to travel restrictions and with limited rights. Orphaned at a young age, Austral has grown up with bigotry and exploitation, struggling to find a place for herself in a world that will not let her fill the niche her parents envisaged.

The novel opens with Austral working as a prison guard, and the lover of a human organised criminal. He continues to run his crime gang from within prison, relying on corrupt prison guards. Through his abusive and exploitative relationship with Austral, he persuades her to take a key role in his plan to kidnap the daughter of a prominent politician, who is a distant cousin of Austral's. When the plan inevitably goes wrong, Austral finds herself on the run with her cousin across the frozen wastes of Antarctica. As they are chased, Austral's story is shown to us through a series of flashbacks.

I confess to being underwhelmed by Austral. The main story is little more than an extended chase sequence. While the novel has some interesting things to say about human modification, bigotry and the choices that face us about how we use and safeguard our natural environment, these issues were underexplored, with a fairly superficial treatment. While entertaining and competently written, Austral is not a book that delivers much to excite or engage the reader.

Goodreads rating: 3*

Por norma general, la ciencia ficción que habla de un futuro cercano con tintes ecológicos es eminentemente pesimista. En libros como The Water Knife, las consecuencias del cambio climático hacen aflorar los peores instintos del ser humano mientras lucha por la supervivencia.

Sin embargo, la aproximación que hace Paul McAuley en Austral es diferente. El derretimiento de los casquetes polares, conlleva la aparición de nuevas superficies habitables, que deberán ser acondicionadas para que el ser humano pueda sobrevivir ante temperaturas extremas. Por supuesto que hay problemas, pero también hay gente que se pone manos a la obra para solucionarlos.

Además, Austral es una trama mucho más íntima, en la que el paisaje nevado e inhóspito sirve como marco e influye tanto en los actos como en la motivación de la protagonista sin quitar en ningún momento importancia a los sentimientos de los personajes. Con un pasado y un futuro marcado por las decisiones de su familia, Austral es una husky, una humana genéticamente modificada para adaptarse a la vida en un entorno hostil. Por ello mismo, es una paria en la sociedad, con un gobierno que legisla en contra de su comunidad y que no perdona los errores de su juventud.

Me gustaría hacer especial hincapié en la utilización del lenguaje por parte de McAuley, capaz de utilizar eufemismos como cutlery al referirse a las armas de los matones o vocabulario de origen australiano para "localizar" la obra. Sin embargo, lo que me ha maravillado es la inclusión de la palabra ecopoet. Añadir una connotación a una palabra que ya existe, relacionándola con la ecopoiesis me parece un golpe de genio, capaz de humanizar y cargar de empatía la labor de los biólogos, ingenieros y demás personal especializado que lucha por terraformar la Tierra. La formación como botánico de Paul McAuley le permite hablar con propiedad de las modificaciones que llevan a cabo estos ecopoetas, de una forma consistente y creíble.

Pero es que la parte científica sirve para apoyar algunos de los momentos más emotivos del libro, como cuando Austral encuentra un pequeño pájaro congelado.

La persona a la que Austral dirige sus palabras también ayuda desde el principio a que el lector cree un vínculo emocional con el libro, que recorre la fina línea entre el sentimiento y la razón sin acabar de volcarse en ninguna de las dos áreas.

También le encuentro problemas, por desgracia. La necesidad de volcar información que desconocemos sobre el pasado de la protagonista, hace que el autor incrustre relatos tipo flashback en mitad de la narración, que lastran el ritmo. A pesar de que nos dejan ver la evolución de los ecopoetas y las múltiples decisiones políticas al respecto, me hubiera gustado más que se hubiera utilizado otro recurso para mostrarlo, en vez de este "como ya sabes Bob" modernizado.

Además, la presencia de un libro que parece una versión muy simplificada del de La Era del Diamante de Neal Stephenson me parece un recurso algo tosco, para que la joven que lo utiliza pueda equilibrar el peso de las historias de Austral.

En cuanto a la denuncia sobre las desigualdades, también me parece que podría haber sido un poco más refinada, aunque no negaré que McAuley soslaya la dificultad intrínseca de tratar un tema candente como este de forma elegante y aleccionadora, creando un nuevo tipo de oprimido, el husky del que hablábamos con anterioridad.

En definitiva, recomiendo mucho este libro, que a pesar de sus inconvenientes ha sido una lectura más que entretenida.

A creative concept, well written, and engrossing! Life in Antarctica is normal for Austral, an edited person, a husky. In this world created by climate change and rising waters, her life is in jeopardy, and some of the choices she makes are forced upon her.

A review in spanish: https://dreamsofelvex.blogspot.com/2017/10/austral-paul-mcauley.html

I absolutely love this one. This first-person narrative by Austral grabbed me from the first page and wouldn’t let me go until the end. It very quickly becomes apparent that Austral is telling this story for the benefit of someone who she feels needs to know her family history, which is woven into this classic chase across the harsh peninsula as Austral and her kidnap victim try to stay one step ahead of those in pursuit – who aren’t necessarily the forces of law and order.

There is all the excitement and tension of their adventure as they encounter a number of memorable characters, some kind and helpful but most are nothing of the sort. This is a hard new land peopled by many refugees from a drowning world, which doesn’t engender soft fluffy feelings. I was waiting for the inevitable moment when the two fleeing finally bond – the huskie outcast and the rich, privileged child of a rising politician. But McAuley avoids that cliché. There is never a time when Austral can relax and feel her young companion will innately trust her.

Meanwhile, Austral’s unfolding story is one of abandonment of the promises made to keep Antarctica ecologically sustainable as once again, the vested interests of multi-nationals and capitalism trumps all else. The sub-species of huskies, whose DNA were edited to equip them for living and working on the land, are now no longer required for that prime purpose. Nor are they wanted by the normals, who fear their size, superior strength and stamina, so ensure the law enforces their instinctive reaction to keep them as far away as possible.

The other character that features throughout is the landscape itself. McAuley’s scientific background shows in the depth and detail of this harsh environment. I love the fact that mammoths have been brought back as a viable eco-system has started to be designed – until forest plantations swallow up the fragile landscape and inappropriate crops are grown to appease the appetites of a people with no appreciation or real knowledge of how this emerging landmass is being eco-engineered. It all sounds horribly familiar.

Any niggles? While I felt that Austral’s storyline about her own family history worked very well alongside the ongoing adventure, the one ongoing narrative thread I could have happily done without was the fairy story Austral’s young teenage companion was reading. It was the one part of the story that didn’t really convince me, both as something that would interest Austral, or its relevance to the other two plotlines and to be honest, I mostly skimmed over those sections. However that aside, this story has lodged inside my head since I’ve read it and notwithstanding that one false step, this is an extraordinary book. Highly recommended for fans who like hard science fiction and cli-fi (climate fiction). While I obtained the arc of Austral from the publisher via NetGalley, this has in no way influenced my unbiased review.
9/10

Austral by Paul McAuley

Austral is a husky, a genetically-edited person, moulded to fit to life in the extreme environment of the Antarctic – bigger, faster, stronger than others who view her and those like her with hostility and fear. Austral is also the child of ecopoets, the engineers who have reworked land, plants and animals to survive. The planet has warmed and the northern islands and coasts of Antarctica have been transformed by forests and cities. The focus of the world has shifted southwards.

There are few jobs for huskies like Austral. She is a guard in a prison, far from settlement, who spends her days leading teams of prisoners outside to build and construct. But at this edge of the world, the distinction between prisoner and guard is blurred, most particularly between Austral and her prison’s most dangerous criminal Keever. But the arrival of an influential politician and his daughter throws the prison into turmoil, offering opportunities, dangers and the chance of escape.

Austral is a beautifully written novel, which portrays in stark and stunning terms the new frontier of Antarctica. It’s warming up but not fast enough for Austral. Much of the novel is a pursuit across this country and it couldn’t be more harsh. The adventure that Austral undergoes is so well evoked. It feels dangerous. It’s full of traps, barriers and extreme cold. The story is told by Austral as if she were dictating it and this gives us the humanity of someone who is regarded as less than human. It also internalises her conflict.

Throughout the novel we’re presented with interludes, passages which give us something of Austral’s past – and therefore revealing more about the magical concept of the ecopoets – and also another fairytale strand. I could have done without the latter – it was too much of a distraction. But I did enjoy the look into the past.

Austral tells a disturbing story – it’s grim, cold and at times very sad. There were bits that I found upsetting. But it is warmed by the characters of Austral and also Kamilah, another memorable personality. And they contrast with the brutes. But, for me, the strength of the novel isn’t in the characters or even in the story – I couldn’t help preserving some detachment from both – but in the astonishing worldbuilding. I loved the mix of Antarctica as it always has been and as it is being made, complete with mammoths.

On a minor point, I read a great many science fiction series and trilogies. It made such a change – and a pleasant one, too – to read a novel that is complete in itself. Even if this is a world to which Paul McAuley returns in the future, Austral is whole.

Other review
Something Coming Through

Antarctica has been changed by global warming, to reveal the land beneath. The Antarctic Peninsula has become colonised. Austral Morales Ferraro is a genetically modified ethnic minority, who is related to a prominent family. With no financial support from them, Austral has had to make her own way in the world. Now she is a warden in a labour camp and in too deep with one of the most influential inmates. When the situation conspires for her to be involved in a kidnapping, Austral decides to take matters into her own hands and keep the ransom for herself, so she can begin a new life. But in doing that she has to avoid being caught by not only the authorities, but also her lover’s henchmen. All this has to be done while dragging along her captive, a teenage girl not equipped to handle an extended time out in the wilderness.
Austral, on the other hand, has been adapted to survive the harsh environment and as a result is bigger and stronger than other women, as well as possessing extra layers of fat, which help her stay warm against the cold. She is therefore not some sexy, lithe kickass warrior, but the type of heroine who gets through life and dire situations on sheer grit and determination. She certainly needs plenty of that in what is effectively a pursuit thriller set in the wilderness of a future Antarctica.
The place is now a new, frontier world and one which is described in a way that is entirely believable. That it is seen through the eyes of Austral, and her backstory, lends weight to a reader’s ability to get emotionally involved with her.
The notion that the uncovering of this continent will one day be a reality and the people living in it will not only have to survive the place, but also each other, makes for an engaging narrative.

Cli-fi. We had a discussion on it at SFFWorld a while back, and the impression was that, with global changes occurring, it was going to become an increasingly relevant and important topic in science fiction. If not in real life.

And here is the proof. Paul’s latest book is a travelogue of gangsters, pursuit and revenge across a landscape of climate change.

If you are a regular genre reader, you may know this already. However, it is relevant here, that often with a science fiction novel it is not just the characters that are important. Equally important, or perhaps even more important, the unusual setting is what elevates a tale to the science-fictional, that allows us to imagine things weirder, stranger and grander than our normal lifestyle. Think Dune. Think Trantor. Think Mesklin.

In Austral, though the characters are what moves the plot forward, it is the landscape they travel through that is the most memorable. This is an Antarctic different from the place we recognise from our nature programmes. Yes, there are vast stretches of icy wastes, but nothing like we see today. Instead there are trees, energy farms, decaying mines and cities. It is a world of rising sea levels, flooded urban landscapes and decrepit transnational projects.

It must also be said that often in science fiction it is these vistas that hold our attention, moreso than the characters that live there. Of the characters we are given here, what must be seen as an honest narrative, albeit from an unreliable narrator. Austral Morales Ferrado is an outsider from an ethnic minority, a genetically altered human nicknamed a husky, remodelled to cope with the extreme cold and climate of the South Pole. She is a criminal from an exiled group of eco-poets, an environmental group once laughed at by the politicians. Left to terraform the wilderness, they have a resistance network of surrogate underground subterfuge, rather like those seen in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series.

When ‘Stral’s job as a correction officer (think prison guard in an extremely dangerous prison) overlaps with her relationship with Keever Bishop, a really bad inmate, it is clear that that’s not a good thing. Despite this, ‘Stral goes into the relationship knowing fully that she shouldn’t, yet does so anyway. It’s not long before Keever wants something else, and this leads to ‘Stral escaping with young Kamilah Toomy, her cousin, whilst Keever and his henchmen chases them across the Antarctic landscape. ‘Stral is looking for refuge and a way to return Kamilah to her influential father, Deputy Alberto Toomy, whilst Keever wants Kamilah back as a hostage, for leverage.

Whilst ‘Stral runs with Kamilah across the Antarctic, we find out more about ‘Stral’s past, her family and how she got to this point. It’s deliberately focussed on its small scale, with a plot that is decidedly revengeful. What it shows us is that those human emotions of love, hatred, and betrayal, of loyalty and legacy are still important.

It’s also a place for metaphysical soul-searching as well. There is an examination of personal identity as ‘Stral tries to reconcile her past with her current life and on her physical journey Kamilah realises that the world is not as straight-forward as her teenage life has shown her to be.

There is a twist at the end, though really by then the tale’s purpose is done.

For me, the main effect of reading Austral is the creation of a feeling of melancholy, a sense of passing, of change – and not always for the good. It is engrossing and yet a little depressing, the old ideas of a bright future seemingly long gone. Gone are our shiny spaceships, instead we welcome JG Ballard’s world of physical and human decay.

For a story that seems small in scale and nature, its cumulative effect is large. Austral is a surprisingly affecting story of our possible future.

McAuley’s depiction of a world where geoengineering projects have failed, the world is warming, and the beautifully names ecopoets attempt to rescue the land, is an interesting read, but for me perhaps not an exciting one.
There’s kidnaps, chases, fights, but not much that made me want to turn the page. I couldn’t really get into any of the characters, and the pace just didn’t grab me. Ordinarily I like the technique of breaking into interludes telling different stories, or historical stories, or news feeds, but here the breaks into the fantasy story-telling aspect just exacerbated the pacing issues for me.
That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, and that others wouldn’t love it, but it just didn’t keep my attention as much as I hoped it would.
I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

McAuley has once again wowed with his world-building. Austral is part near-future science fiction and science prediction. I enjoyed this stand-alone book.

This book reads like an epic, despite centring on a kidnap and chase through difficult and dangerous terrain.  The exact identity of the hunters is uncertain, and the factions that they could belong to are many.  Austral kidnaps the granddaughter of her own grandfather, which is a 'sort of cousin'. Austral is a 'husky', with super-strength and endurance, plus adaptation to cold climates. Maybe this gene adaptation puts her apart from normal kin relationships.  Austral's background is well laid out at the start. Her virtual incarceration in the labour camps, despite being employed as a warder, leads her to take any opportunity she can to get out.

The vivid and detailed description of the terrain, the natural environment and ecosystems through which the chase twists and turns is a tour-de-force of world-building. A well-travelled reader who enjoys the far north will feel at home.  Glaciated features, montaine regions, high Alps refuges, mountaineering techniques, and survival approaches abound. The author strings these beautifully together in a comprehensive reworking of what might lie beneath the Antarctic icepack.

He also twists three strands together to relieve the tension of the journey. Austral's history of her grandfather's past contrasts with her young cousin's refuge in fairytales that seem to her to offer guidance or hope. Austral's self-absorption and lengthy reflections on her situation during the rest periods in the chase possibly gave better explanation of Austral's and her cousin's motivations than the background tales. Readers who require a full history, however, will find themselves well satisfied.

Summary

Mr McAuley writes beautiful, lyrical descriptions of wilderness, and recreates the atmosphere of a mountainous tundra with sparkle and awe. The future he creates is all too believable, given the state of the world at the moment.

Hmm. I liked the concept of this, but not the execution. The multiple narratives and time shifts felt out of place, and the language strained for "literary' when that wasn't necessary. This will probably have a niche sci-fi audience.

2.5 stars - Thank you, NetGalley, for this preview copy.

Although I love Paul McAuley's prose in all his books, it was sadly insufficient here.

There are a number of interwoven stories, some in the past, one fantasy, and one in the present. Only the one in the present has real forward motion, the others fail to come alive. Worse, those interfere with the pacing and tension of the main story.

The world-building is very good, but not up to McAuley's usual seamless wonders. And as interesting as the "icy south" setting, that is just not enough to sustain any of the plots.

The main plot starts with Austral as a corrections officer supervising a future "chain gang" in Antartica. McAuley’s prose flows and flows. You’re really there with Austral, living her life, being set up by the big con-man, prisoner-boss. Fantastic stuff! Just as this gets interesting, whoosh we are now in the past, with several confusing stories of Austral's parents etc. They seem distant, and their lives and troubles only detract from the main event.

After coming back to Austral, we see an interesting story of escape and difficulties, but again and again the side stories suck the life from the main tale. The concept of a "frozen road trip", in many ways reminds me of Jack London, Len Deighton and Alastair MacLean. This should be great stuff, but the pacing is poor, although the scenery is quite amazing.

Much of the backstories is pretty dull, and unforgivably irrelevant to the main plot. If these stories had not been poorly interwoven, but had been separate short stories, or novellas, coming together in a final chapter or two, this might have been much better.

Add in Eddie, one of the "villain” and we are squirming. He is a slimy and repulsive coward. Who enjoys reading about such a scumbag? I remember getting up from the movie "Star 80" due to the skin-crawling villain. I could feel it for days after.

All the plots resolve eventually, none with any sense of justice or redemption, or even fun.

A great disappointment as a novel, with some redeeming facets.

What a journey Austral took me on. It was my please to meet her. She is edited human adapted to a harsh climate of quite possible future Earth. Politics ring truthfully in a complex world Austral lives in. A novel for any speculative future or science lovers. Inspires to analyze the world we live in!

I have mixed feelings about this book. The dystopian world in which the story takes place is superbly imagined, and the characterization is very good. The story within a story was done too many times and went on too long.

Austral is more science literature than just science fiction. Throw in a little ecowarrior attitude and you've got the makings of a great story.

Usually I find it awkward when a book starts in the middle of a story and then works it's way backward and forward but Austral seemed to work out ok in the end. The character of Austral herself was well written and deeply moving.