Doctor Jasmine Marks is going back into hell.
The Hygrometric Dehabitation Region, or the “Zone,” is a growing band of rainforest on the equator, where the heat and humidity make it impossible for warm-blooded animals to survive. A human being without protection in the Zone is dead in minutes.
Twenty years ago, Marks went into the rainforest with a group of researchers led by Doctor Elaine Fell, to study the extraordinary climate and see if it could be used in agriculture. The only thing she learned was that the Zone was no place for people. There were deaths, and the program was cut short.
Now, they’re sending her back in. A plane crash, a rescue mission, a race against time and the environment to bring out the survivors. But there are things Marks’s corporate masters aren’t telling her. The Zone keeps its secrets, and so does Doctor Fell . . .

IN A NUTSHELL
‘Saturation Point’ was everything I could ask for from speculative fiction: original, surprising, science-based with a few ‘what if’ extrapolations, and the twists and pace of a thriller. All of which was made even better by Emma Newman’s narration. I think this is Adrian Tchaikovsky at his best.

‘Saturation Point‘ was a tense, intelligent Climate Fiction thriller, made more intense by being delivered as a first-person narrative at novella length. 

I liked that, in this version of a climate change apocalypse, it’s only the mammals whose survival is threatened. Other species are thriving. So much Climate Fiction talks about The End Of The World, envisioning global warming as killing the planet. ‘Saturation Point‘ recognises that global warming is only The End Of The World As We Know It. It imagines a climate where the humidity is so high that humans rapidly and fatally overheat unless they’re protected by a suit. Then it asks, “But what life WOULD not just survive but thrive in that environment?”

The novella is a thriller, not a treatise on ecology. It’s a compelling story, told by a scientist who is being given a chance to return to a place where her career peaked twenty years earlier: the hostile environment of the Zone, an equatorial rainforest, lush with life but with a lethal-to-humans level of humidity. It is a compelling mystery told as a first-person account by a narrator in a hostile environment with her agenda under threat from the unexpected. The plot kept me guessing. The action kept me turning the pages. The underlying concept left me with plenty to think about. 

I recommend the audiobook. Emma Newman’s performance did a lot to increase my engagement with the story.  Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.