Under the Blue: Shortlisted for the 2023 ASLE-UKI Book Prize (Hardback)

Under the Blue is a novel with a terrible beauty. Oana Aristide gives us so much to think about: environmental destruction, the melting of the polar ice, eco-terrorism, but all within a heart-stopping story of three survivors travelling through Europe alone. I couldn't look away - Claire Fuller, author, Bitter Orange

A super-smart and relentlessly gripping addition to the ecofiction genre, Under the Blue is by turns chilling, incisive, and casually hilarious. It also features one of the most convincing sentient-AI characters in recent fiction - Sandra Newman, author, The Heavens

A book of insight and foresight, lit with wit and gorgeous with intelligence - Jay Griffiths, author, Wild: An Elemental Journey

The discussions between human and AI are fascinating, revealing different ways of perceiving reality ... a beautifully written, emotionally gripping book. - Guardian

Beautifully written, filmic. - Rosa Rankin Gee, author of Dreamland

Oana Aristide has woven deep questions about ethics, artificial intelligence, our treatment of the natural world and the prospect of human extinction into a page-turning thriller with a surprising ending - Peter Singer, author, The Most Good You Can Do

Chillingly evocative and relentlessly unsettling. A compelling battle for humanity's survival fought simultaneously on both the physical and intellectual fronts. - Chris Brookmyre

Highly readable and chilling. Threads together a pandemic storyline with the implications of AI in a way that is very intriguing and especially relevant today - Mark Lynas, author, Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency

Under the Blue fuses the 'keep moving' urgency that drives apocalyptic road novels with a restrained love story and a science fiction that is at once unnerving, tender and credible - Cynan Jones, author, The Dig

Terrifying but hopeful, smart, vital and urgent: the ultimate must-read. - Charles Foster, author, Being a Beast

What an extraordinary book this is; ostensibly a compelling, addictive post-apocalyptic thriller, but also a ferociously intelligent examination of artificial intelligence, a highly accomplished treatise on the function of art, and a lyrical, moving, vitally urgent plea for expanded ecological awareness. It is a book with the force of prophecy - Niall Griffiths, author, Broken Ghost

A clear-eyed, unstinting challenge to all our complacencies that is unsettling, brave, philosophical, and as fast-paced as a thriller. A Frankenstein for modern times that, maybe, if we are lucky and if we listen to what it has to say, just might be the book to change our lives - Laura Beatty

Highly readable and hugely important ­- an apocalyptic road trip into our near future informed and shaped by the most pressing issues of our present - Owen Sheers

A startling, intellectual, post-Covid adventure - New Scientist

Under the Blue's depth of thought shows through in its parallels with real events, and its angle on the subject emerges gradually but resonantly... a sad, angry novel with a surprising note of hope - SFX