Synopsis:Rosita is a young girl whose loving mother commands a strange kind of magic, but their happiness dies in the icy cold of a snow-bound gulag. Her mother is forced to hide her precious treasure and Rosita’s spirit is crushed by the cruelty and envy of the other children. She takes the name Sloe and tries to keep her head down, but when her own innocence leads to her mother's disappearance, Sloe must claim her treasure and set out on her mother's quest to preserve the most precious thing in a dying world: life itself.

Review:Ann Halam’s Siberia is a strange and magical tale of environmental mismanagement and future science. The grim setting walks constantly on the brink of obscene farce, but Halam avoids the plunge and the result is emotionally powerful.

The story is about loyalty, trust and love, far more than it is about science. Halam pays just enough attention to the nuts and bolts of genetics – a subject on which she is clearly well-read – to lend an air of verisimilitude and hold the title of science fiction. The true theme of the work is, however, the contrast between the unquestioning loyalty of the Lindquist kits and the self-serving motives of the humans that Sloe encounters. The matter of agendas and the question of how to trust when you have once been betrayed makes the novel not only effective and affecting, but also very relevant to a teenage audience finding their way in a more complex emotional world.

Siberia is science fiction at its most speculative and mature. It covers some difficult ground, especially as it concerns the loss of parents, the pressure to conform and the question of trust. For the more advanced teenage reader, this is stirring and potent stuff.