The ideas the book raises—about how society will organize itself once the slow-moving climate and energy catastrophes finally hit home, and about the power of family and societal relationships to help humanity push on—are ideas that we'll all have to grapple with, sooner than we'd hope. ALT excels in imagining the role that technology will play in bringing about future strife, while convincingly suggesting that personal solace and global solutions are going to rely on technological advances as well.

This is a remarkably confident debut novel, and sets the stage for what will hopefully be further books set in the same near-future dystopia.