DREAMTIME
Venetia Welby
Salt, £12
In 2035, Earth is plagued by rising sea levels, natural disasters and environmental crises. Air travel is about to be curtailed, so this is the last chance for Sol to find her father, an American marine stationed in Okinawa. Accompanied by her lifelong friend Kit, who shared Sol’s upbringing in a religious cult, she heads to Japan, but their odyssey takes them on to more remote Pacific islands, where supernatural forces seem to be awakening, as though the climate crisis has roused spirits bent on taking revenge on the despoilers of the natural world. The chequered history of the American military in Japan adds to the unease of their journey. Though the self-destructive Sol and her devoted Kit are at least an interestingly mismatched couple, the backdrop to their travels is more fully-realised than the central characters, the hallucinogenic edge to Welby’s prose evoking an otherworldly sense of impending reckoning for the human race.