Siberia by Ann Halam

Like a girl in a fairy tale, Sloe is trapped in an icy land. She has been forced to live, with her mother, a fallen queen, in a hovel on the edge of a frozen waste. There is no grass, trees, or birds–only snow, poisoned ground, and endless cold. Sloe’s only distraction from her numbing life is the magic her mother makes in the dead of night, with glass tubes and mysterious powders. When Sloe is sent away to the school of the enemy, her mother makes her promise to guard the magic with her life, should her mother ever be forced to leave their hovel. Now, the worst has happened. Sloe has returned to find her mother gone and the magic tubes left for her to carry to safety. There is a compass, and a map for her to follow. But this is no fairy tale. Instead, this is Ann Halam’s dark vision of the future, where a brilliant scientist is thrown in prison with her little girl for harboring the secrets of animal life in a world that saw it’s last horse, elephant and cheetah long before Sloe was even born. In Sloe’s test tubes are living pieces of DNA that she must carry across a continent to save not only herself and her mother, but all of animal-kind. Brilliant, breath-taking and edge-of-your-seat thrilling, Halam melds fairytale constructs with cutting-edge science in a story so thought-provoking, Siberia is a place you’ll want to visit again and again, despite the chill factor!