In a climate-ravaged, near-future Sydney, Alice struggles to free her husband from prison while navigating a corrupt world of advanced technology, medical experimentation, and ethical ambiguity, especially after a mysterious human-bat hybrid appears on her doorstep. As she confronts threats, betrayal, and the limits of trust, the story explores the persistence of love and morality amid systemic corruption and personal desperation.

Reader Review Summary

"After the Great Storm" is a gripping and imaginative speculative fiction novel that immerses the reader in a vividly realized near-future world. Set in a climate-changed Sydney of 2075, Dombroski has created a setting that feels both familiar and unsettlingly plausible. She deftly weaves details like rooftop farms, wind tunnels between towering apartment blocks, and underground storm shelters into a believable vision of what life could look like just decades from now.

At the heart of the novel is Alice Kaczmarek, a tremendously compelling protagonist who must navigate a world of moral ambiguity and institutional corruption. Despite the science-fiction framing, Alice's struggles feel profoundly human and relatable - her desperate desire for a child, her fierce love for her wrongfully imprisoned husband Daniel, and her refusal to give up on justice no matter the obstacles. Alice is the type of nuanced, multi-layered character that draws you in from the first pages.

One of the book's great strengths is Dombroski's skill in blending speculative elements with universal human themes of love, trust, and the tension between individual morality and societal norms. While readers are introduced to futuristic marvels like "sliders" and experimental medical procedures, at its core this is a psychologically rich tale grappling with enduring ethical quandaries. How far would you go to protect a loved one? When is civil disobedience justified in the face of a corrupt system? These dilemmas give the novel a resonant emotional weight.

The novel is also enhanced by its strong supporting cast, particularly the enigmatic T - a riveting creation that blurs the lines between human and... something else. T proves to be an unpredictable wild card that propels the plot in surprising new directions. Dombroski also populates the book with well-drawn secondary characters like the sympathetic Lowell that add intriguing shades of gray.

On a sentence level, Dombroski's writing shines with evocative and sensory descriptions that make this strange new world feel visceral and tangible. Her deft intermingling of beauty and darkness, joy and sorrow, imbues the book with a compelling sense of sweeping emotional range. While grappling with heavy subject matter, Dombroski also finds moments of wry humor and quirky charm.

"After the Great Storm" represents a stellar piece of worldbuilding and social speculation, posing urgent questions about moral resilience in an era of climate crisis, technological overreach, and institutionalized greed. At the same time, it is an engrossing character-driven drama that explores the depths of human perseverance, sacrifice, and our unshakable capacity for love against all odds. A haunting and thought-provoking literary speculative novel that lingers long after the final page.