MarkAlan

I'm a huge fan of Philip K. Dick, and I adored this speculative, alternate reality book. It's been labelled "steampunk" in a lot of reviews, but that's very misleading. Steam powered droids do not a steampunk novel make. It's really a genrebuster and speculative scifi at its best. An no, there are no rockiets, or aliens. Those aren't necessary for scifi.

There's romance and heartbreak, and questions about what it really means to be human, when is a terrorist a freedom fighter and the reverse. It's also a detective story.  A wonderful book I didn't skim once.

This is the blurb from the author's website:

Hope City, Antarctica. The southernmost city in the world, with only a glass dome and a faltering infrastructure to protect its citizens from the freezing, ceaseless winds of the Antarctic wilderness. Within this bell jar four people–some human, some not–will shape the future of the city forever:

Eliana Gomez, a female PI looking for a way to the mainland.

Diego Amitrano, the right-hand man to the gangster who controls the city’s food come winter.

Marianella Luna, an aristocrat with a dangerous secret.

Sofia, an android who has begun to evolve.

But the city is evolving too, and in the heart of the perilous Antarctic winter, faction will clash, dreams will shatter, and that frozen metropolis just might boil over…

Very highly recommended.