With the effects of climate change already being seen, from climate displacement to water being treated as a commodity for profit, supply issues are only expected to worsen, and no one is immune from the challenges we face. I was frequently having to stop to try and make sense of a sentence, work out who was saying what and what was/ wasn’t dialogue.

Tiddalik the Frog - Part one - BBC Teach Tiddalik the Frog - Part one - BBC Teach

A dog with an infection will often have a fever, and this will cause them to become dehydrated, resulting in unusual and excessive thirst. A network of tiny canals on their spiky skin catches small amounts of water and guides the liquid directly to their mouth.This novel joins the growing ranks of climate fiction, presenting a very narrow and very on-the-nose view of the consequences of climate change, namely extreme drought.

Thirsty Animals - Books from Scotland Thirsty Animals - Books from Scotland

But if the sector continues to grow as it has up to now, almost 360 million tons of meat will be produced and consumed worldwide in 2030. There’s been no rain for over a year and the previous five have been unbelievably hot leading to severe drought conditions, nothing can grow and so there’s nothing to feed the animals. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the midwestern USA and western China suffer from soil salinity due to irrigation with groundwater. Thirsty Animals provides us with a dystopian view of the future that feels very current, and worryingly not that futuristic at all. The same amount of sheep or goat meat takes almost 9,000 litres, a kilo of pork 6,000 litres, and of chicken 4,300 litres.

Thirsty Animals plays on that most common of apocalyptic tropes that people will essentially do anything to survive when things start to look bad. Aida, the main characters, is one of those who struggles throughout to embrace the lawlessness of the dry new world. Ruling out other diseases is the first thing to do because of the extensive testing needed to diagnose liver disease in dogs. In any case, it's an exploration of plausible "what ifs" and of human nature - how human society can deteriorate, what people do when they're desperate, that I found incredibly interesting and powerful, so I guess in terms of pure craft I should give 4 stars, but it was so bleak and mostly devoid of joy (most of what Aida does that could be joyful isn't done joyfully), that I struggled to finish the book (also, the lack of dialogue markers didn't help, although to be fair I found the dialogues reasonably clear most of the time) as I'm already climate anxious anyway. But beyond that message, the narrative does little but be dark, throwing in some here are other ways humans can be awful plot points just to drive it all home.