Finished: Cold People (Smith) I'm so glad Tom Rob Smith wrote another book! Cold People is different from his Child 44 trilogy, but still very thought-provoking, to say the least. As the book opens, we are in Lisbon, Portugal with an American family on a two week luxury European vacation. Liza is a 24 year old Medical Student who has joined her mother, father and 16 year old sister, Emma. The vacation has been all regimented, tour-guided visits to museums and famous sites and now, on their last night in Lisbon, Liza decides to skip a tour and actually go explore the waterfront on her own. It is here that she meets the local boat guide, Atto, who gives tours on his family's historical fishing ship. There is such a connection between them when they just look at each other, and banter a bit, that Atto pleads with her to come back that evening at 6pm for a tour. He believes they are destined to be together, and he's not just feeding her a line. Liza sits at dinner with her family at five minutes until six, when she finally jumps up and decides to go and meet Atto. She arrives fifteen minutes late, but he is still waiting there for her and is delighted to see her. They go on a tour around the river and under a romantic bridge and Atto tells Liza that he is not going to try and kiss her because he doesn't want her to think he WAS just feeding her a line. This actually upsets Liza since they have truly connected even further, sharing past experiences and hopes and dreams. She asks Atto to take her back to the dock, and he does, but something is terribly wrong. There is not a single tourist or local person walking around in the town square. It looks totally deserted. As Liza disembarks from the ship she looks up in the sky and sees hundreds of alien space ships hovering in the sky. She is completely mesmerized and looks back for Atto, who is equally as mesmerized. They hurry to the town square and find that everyone is packed into wherever there is a television because all cell phones have gone out and all electricity is off, but every television set and phone has come to life with the same message which goes on repeat and never changes. The aliens are here to take over the planet and anyone who wants to survive has exactly 30 days to get to Antarctica and live the rest of their lives there. People are stunned, but there is sudden panic and anarchy. There are no more world leaders on the television telling them what to do at this moment. Everyone must fend for themelves and somehow how get to the most life-inhospitable continent in the world. Liza and Atto look at each other and he tells her he will escort her to her family at the hotel and then go to his own family. They say goodbye at the hotel, realizing that not only will their lives change forever, they will lose the connection that had started to build between them forevever. When Liza finally gets to her family, they join the crowds of traffic in the city trying to desperately make their way to the airport and fly home. As their rental car gets stuck in completely stopped traffic that goes for streets and streets, they decide to get out of the car and go by foot. When Liza gets out of the car and looks up, she sees a man jumping from the hood of car to car as if they are stepping stones. It is Atto! And, he is looking for her. He tells her that she and her family must  come with him to his boat...that it is the only way out of the country. What ensues is a massive, treachorous exodus of people trying to make their way to Antarctica in the given time alotted. Most jumbo jets are being filled with people who countries presume to be their most intelligent scientists, world leaders, and survival specialists. The book maintains it's tense suspense throughout, as we watch Atto and Liza figure out a way to get themselves and their families to Antarctica safely where they will also have to figure out how to survive the climate. The story is good and unique and heartbreaking. It picks back up 20 years later and we see just how the people who survived did so. We also see the lengths that the scientists have gone to to ensure the continuation of human civilization...and it's not pretty. Human genome manipulation has taken place in the hopes of creating human beings that also have aspects of other species who have been able to survive the elements and reproduce as well. It is so totally unethical and hard to fathom. I'm not going to spoil any more of the plot, but it was a scarily good book with a rather open-ended ending. Hmm....

Here's the Amazon blurb: 

From the brilliant, bestselling author of Child 44 and creator of the FX series Class of ’09 comes a “cinematic” (The Washington Post), “captivating…[and] “brilliantly conceived postapocalyptic story” (Booklist, starred review) about an Antarctic colony of global apocalypse survivors seeking to reinvent civilization 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 perilous 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?