Strange Horizons review of Kaisa Saarinen’s Weather Underwater

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Weather Underwater Cover (a painting of a pale, bloated hand drifting beside a red sea anemone and a discarded soda can).
(Cover Illustrator: Alice M.)
Strange Horizons have posted a review I wrote for them of Kaisa Saarinen's novel Weather Underwater, which can be read at this link.

This book was an intense story to read, but also a fascinating work to spend time thinking about. The main plot follows two characters who end up on opposite sides of a fascist takeover of a near-future version of Britain. One protagonist, Mia, is an environmental engineer who joins the titular antifascist organization Weather Underwater after the rise of an anti-immigration dictatorship called the Ebbtide party. The book's other character, Lily, is a former romantic partner of Mia's who chooses to work as an undercover agent for Ebbtide itself, but who is unintentionally reunited with Mia when she is tasked by Ebbtide with secretly infiltrating Weather Underwater as a spy.

This story of Mia's and Lily's reunion is paralleled by a secondary narrative told via flashbacks that examines Lily's reasons for aligning herself with Ebbtide, as well as Mia's reasons for opposing this organization and dedicating her life toward Weather Underwater's humanitarian cause. Eventually, these two stories come to explore why it is that fascist organizations idealize violence, with both Lily and Mia being shown to view acts of cruelty in fundamentally different ways that lead them to very different movements. An excerpt from the review I wrote is below:

In one respect, Weather Underwater is a very subtle character-focused narrative detailing the gradual reunion of two formerly close friends, both of whom have endured drastically different lives that are nevertheless still linked by a common experience in their pasts. In another respect, however, Weather Underwater is a novel examining the link between fascism and violence, and seems to depict how the acts of cruelty that accompany fascist movements are paradoxically both separate from and integral to the bigotry with which these movements are paired. It’s only in the novel’s ending that Saarinen reconciles both of these stories, with the book merging its two halves in a conclusion that is itself so abrupt and tragic that it seems to redefine the nature of everything that has come before.

The full review which I wrote for Strange Horizons can be read here.

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