This novel is one hell of a ride! Grim and dystopian, (it shares some styling with Cormac McCarthy's The Road), it at the same time manages to be 500 pages of propulsive page turning excitement and tension. It also has some moments of family warmth, a romance, and a ton of humanity in the midst of climate induced terror. It's one of the most extraordinary books I've read in some time; you know right from the first sentences that Winton is in complete control of his material. This book deserves to be very widely read. If it is, it's still possible that the very plausible future world it portrays will not happen.