It Gets Wetter

As an image of a climate-changed world, the metaphor of the intertidal, a "zone of uncertainty and doubt, space of risk and reward," is the great gift of Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel New York 2140. It's a hulking 600-page feast of a wounded, stubborn city teeming with broken hearts, young idealists, wizened pros, resilient 1-percenters, scrappy orphans, advanced tech, and revolutionary passion. (Even the epigraphs are epic.) And it's an eventful feast. After a methodical, satisfying build, the last quarter of the book is tasteful disaster porn woven into a fast-paced political thriller.