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Oct 09, 2018richmole rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
The title sounds like just another apocalyptic thriller. One look at the dust-cover illustration--a vibrant metropolis, traditional buildings awash in fifty feet of seawater and many 22nd century skyscrapers crowding the new shoreline of "uptown" Manhattan--tells you this is no typical end-of-the-world novel. And it isn't. This is not a fight-for-survival story in the wake (no pun intended) of global warming. Not in the traditional sense. It's a chronicle of people, young and old, rich and poor, who, in many clever, intriguing ways, become a vanguard for a new North-American society 120-odd years in the future. Author Kim Stanley Robinson anchors his firmly in the near-past of the early Millennium, through the thoughts and memories of a cryptic "Citizen" who pops up occasionally to provide voice-over while the story's characters--a stock manipulator, media personality, policewoman, two treasure-seeking salvage kids, a building super and her worried manager live through their days and nights in a city on the edge of watery destruction. I found it fascinating, clever, funny and very entertaining...and enlightening, too. But be forewarned: if you're after the typical down-and-dirty melodrama of us-against-the-horde (of whatever), you may be disappointed. Go ahead: take a chance--and learn something about how the future might shake out, and how individual human beings--pretty much like those living today--struggle towards a better life, while trying to salvage the one they happen to be caught up in.