I really enjoyed this book and I wonder if I did so because I read it as though it were historical fiction. It can be pedantic but since I felt it was describing a particular time, place, and culture that is slightly different from the usual US culture, I was able to look right past the lessons and gain some perspective about where we are in this current energy moment from above.

The novel begins with 15-year-old Bunny in 1998. We follow her through an aimless summer without supervision in Baku. I fell in love with Bunny's attempts to figure out the adults around her and make her own choices. This first section hums with tension because Bunny could make bad, impactful decisions at any time. The reader learns, along with Bunny, a whole lot about foreign politics around oil. We follow Bunny into her 20s when she starts making career choices, and Bunny and the reader continue to learn about the oil industry. Even though we're into the 2010s, it still reads like historical fiction, because the culture of the oil industry is so foreign yet utterly familiar. The personal stakes for Bunny are lower, so the book is less tense here, but Bunny is still figuring life out and I was deeply invested in how her life would go. It's a credit to Kiesling's writing to keep me riveted, because not a lot unusual happens in Bunny's life after her foreign service childhood. Coming of age, learning about the world, and coming to understand the perils facing the planet are all unremarkable yet pretty stunning, so Bunny is entirely relatable.

CW: This book is very plain about the fact that we live in a culture that undervalues women and overvalues thin bodies. Bunny does not question this and plays her prescribed roles. Kiesling also mentions with regularity that there are only white people (mostly men) in these spaces.

Thank you, NetGalley and Crooked Media Reads. I received an ALC of this book to review.

Mobility is a fascinating blend of a coming-of-age novel with an overview of 21st Century geopolitics. The protagonist is introduced at age 15, a bored teenager living in Baku, Azerbaijan with her father, a diplomat with the US State Department, listening to but barely understanding the adult conversations around her as the economy of the post-Soviet world targets the oil reserves of newly-independent Central Asian nations. Her grasp of world affairs doesn't get much deeper as she enters adulthood, trying to sound liberal and informed, but really far more interested in pursuing her day-to-day interests as the world moves on around her. Eventually, she's drawn into the "energy sector" when she takes a temp job as an administrative assistant for a family business, and eventually becomes a full employee working in marketing, where her role more and more involves re-shaping the image of the industry that has caused so much ecological and socio-political damage around the world.

Kiesling has managed to offer readers a hard look at the oil industry and its role in American and global politics without ever becoming pedantic or preachy. Definitely worth a read.

I'm so happy I was able to get this audiobook right in time for publication day. I think this is a vastly important book and everyone needs to read it. I am so thankful to Zando Publishing, Lydia Kiesling, Dreamscape Books, and Netgalley for granting me release day access.