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ciraabi's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
jennykeery's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
threadbear's review
adventurous
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Chose this on a whim- couldn’t be more glad I did. So good it convinced me I love sci-fi (a thought I have never had in my life). Mega slay. Gave me a lot to think about as an environmental science student.
jbrewis's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
ariesbookshelf's review
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
jeremyhornik's review
4.0
Grim pre- and post-apocalyptic story of a woman engineer trying to get by, first as a programmer on a dodgy arctic survey, and then as a survivor of an ongoing global collapse. Are they related? More scifi than horror, and more actual novel than either. Particularly good on flavors of male antisocial geekdom, with three or more strains well characterized.
squidface's review
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
barb4ry1's review
5.0
Climate fiction matters. The world changes and normal doesn’t exist anymore, just ask my grandparents ;) I believe powerful fiction can impact readers’ behaviors stronger than the raw scientific data or orders and prohibitions. Subtlety works better than brute force. At least for some.
Always North is an ambitious book about the collapsing environment, our accountability, mysterious workings of mind and memory, and the nature of time. It’s set over two time-frames and settings: an oil survey vessel in the Arctic Ocean in 2025 and the Scottish Highlands in 2045.
Isobel, a software engineer, joins a team surveying the Arctic seabed for oil deposits. Along the way, the ship draws the attention of a mysterious polar bear whose appearances will give you goose-bumps. The journey ends in a bloody disaster. The story makes a time jump to show the environmentally ravaged world in which jobs are in short supply. Like most people, Isobel is struggling to make ends meet. To her, the world went apeshit.
‘Just more and worse of everything. Riots. Gangs on the increase. More people, not enough food or shelter to go around. The government too stretched or too preoccupied with saving their own skins to do anything about it.’
Isobel changed. A lot. When we first met her, she was self-centered and living to the fullest on her own terms. Her older self is harder and more conscious. When one of her old crew members (and lovers) shows up and offers her a job, she accepts. With the help of advanced technology, she revisits her memories of the expedition to discover what and how went wrong.
This part of the story, with its flashback segments, has a surreal quality. Jarrett’s writing conveys the intensity of near-endless daylight and bleakness of the frozen wasteland with stunning and evocative descriptions. She controls the narrative with clear but impactful writing that awed me. Her prose is elegant, subtle and compacted. It gives the first half of Always North the velocity of a thriller. The second half of the novel experiments with the structure and can feel meandering to some readers.
Jarrett ends her tale with an incomplete yet touching ending I found perfect. She combines elements of eco-horror, sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic dystopia in something fresh and unique. Not an easy book to follow, but I won’t forget about it anytime soon.
Always North is an ambitious book about the collapsing environment, our accountability, mysterious workings of mind and memory, and the nature of time. It’s set over two time-frames and settings: an oil survey vessel in the Arctic Ocean in 2025 and the Scottish Highlands in 2045.
Isobel, a software engineer, joins a team surveying the Arctic seabed for oil deposits. Along the way, the ship draws the attention of a mysterious polar bear whose appearances will give you goose-bumps. The journey ends in a bloody disaster. The story makes a time jump to show the environmentally ravaged world in which jobs are in short supply. Like most people, Isobel is struggling to make ends meet. To her, the world went apeshit.
‘Just more and worse of everything. Riots. Gangs on the increase. More people, not enough food or shelter to go around. The government too stretched or too preoccupied with saving their own skins to do anything about it.’
Isobel changed. A lot. When we first met her, she was self-centered and living to the fullest on her own terms. Her older self is harder and more conscious. When one of her old crew members (and lovers) shows up and offers her a job, she accepts. With the help of advanced technology, she revisits her memories of the expedition to discover what and how went wrong.
This part of the story, with its flashback segments, has a surreal quality. Jarrett’s writing conveys the intensity of near-endless daylight and bleakness of the frozen wasteland with stunning and evocative descriptions. She controls the narrative with clear but impactful writing that awed me. Her prose is elegant, subtle and compacted. It gives the first half of Always North the velocity of a thriller. The second half of the novel experiments with the structure and can feel meandering to some readers.
Jarrett ends her tale with an incomplete yet touching ending I found perfect. She combines elements of eco-horror, sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic dystopia in something fresh and unique. Not an easy book to follow, but I won’t forget about it anytime soon.
fivemack's review
2.0
Very much not my thing: an incoherent mess of conspiracy, mad science, time travel and giant bears set about quite a good evocation of the Arctic’s inhospitability.