One week into 2025 and I'm already on my second Australian climate fiction novel. Trend alert!
Set in near future Australia, the core of this novel is a police procedural mystery. Detective Azad is searching for a little girl, reported missing amongst the poorest and most marginalised area of the city.
This is interspersed with POV scenes from Arman, Azad's father, and Tasim a refugee who becomes involved in the case. Arman's scenes were moving, and Tasim's flashbacks to his home country and journey to Australia were harrowing and horrifying. Bradley, as always, creates imagery of climate catastrophe so well. These were probably my favourite part of the novel. However, they were also not really relevant to the main story. There didn't really seem to be any reason why the novel needed to be set in the future. We have extreme climate events and climate refugees already, which could have been used to frame the story. I think if I had expected this going into the book, I wouldn't have found it so frustrating. So I still recommend this book - just know that you are getting two different things from it.