Landfall

by James Bradley, Sarah Roberts (narrator)

Sydney is full of climate refugees. Food and water insecurity have created tension. There is poverty, suspicion and cultural disharmony. A world of have and have nots.

In this environment a 5 year old girl from the Floodline, Casey, disappears.

Then the body of an auditor from a development company is found burnt in a car on the site where Casey disappeared. Are they related?

As the next cyclone, bigger than the last, approaches detective Sadiya Azad and her partner, Findlay fight the clock, the apathy of the police force, and the suspicion of the residents of the floodline to locate Casey.

Moving from the inundated streets and crumbling buildings of the Floodline to the refugee camps on the outskirts of the city and the elegant, air-conditioned homes of the wealthy, Landfall is both a crime thriller and a terrifying vision of the future that is bearing down on us.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Mystery, Science Fiction, Crime, Environment, Audiobook

Audible Audio

First published April 24, 2025

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James is the author of five novels: the critically acclaimed climate change narratives, Ghost Species (Hamish Hamilton 2020) and Clade (Hamish Hamilton 2015); The Resurrectionist (Picador 2006), which explores the murky world of underground anatomists in Victorian England and was featured as one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads in 2008; The Deep Field (Sceptre 1999), which is set in the near future and tells the story of a love affair between a photographer and a blind palaeontologist; and Wrack (Vintage 1997) about the search for a semi-mythical Portuguese wreck. He has also written The Change Trilogy for young adults. a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and edited two anthologies, The Penguin Book of the Ocean and Blur, a collection of stories by young Australian writers. His first book of non-fiction, Deep Water: the World in the Ocean will be published in 2024.

Twice one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists, his books have won The Age Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Fellowship of Australian Writers Literature Award and the Kathleen Mitchell Award, and have been shortlisted for awards such as the Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the NSW Premier's Christina Stead Award for Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction and the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and have been widely translated. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and collections, including Best Australian Stories, Best Australian Fantasy and Horror and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories, and has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for Best Science Fiction Short Story and Best Horror Short Story.

As well as writing fiction and poetry, James writes and reviews for a wide range of Australian and international newspapers and magazines. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Australia's Critic of the year.

Reviews

[Ian Mond]

James Bradley is a mate, and reviewing work by a mate is always hard.

The problem is twofold. If the book is shit, how do you sugarcoat the review so you don’t piss off said mate. Sure, they say they want honesty—but trust me, if you call their work a bit shit or not that great, they’ll nod and thank you for your integrity, then call you an arsehole behind your back. You, of course, might be one of those principled types who doesn’t care what your mate thinks of you. I am not that person. I hate pissing off strangers, let alone people I actually like.

Which leads to problem number two: why the fuck would you trust this review, given no matter how rubbish Landfall is, I’m going to be kind about it? A critic who can’t be trusted might as well be a publicist.

I don’t have a good answer—other than trust me, bruh. When I say that Landfall is terrific, I’m not squinting at all the shit bits. There are no shit bits.

Landfall is a police procedural set in a near-future Sydney, where climate change, melting ice, and devastating cyclones have flooded a chunk of the city. Against this depressing backdrop, a five-year-old girl goes missing from the impoverished part of town abutting the flood waters. Investigating her disappearance are Senior Detective Sadiya Azad and Detective Sergeant Paul Findlay, racing against time with a cyclone only days away.

As a procedural, the novel is tightly paced. As a story about the effects of global warming, the novel is terrifying. As a tale about climate refugees hunted down by ICE-like immigration officers, the novel is both timely and an emotional gut punch.

Landfall, though, isn’t a cautionary tale. If you’ve read Bradley’s other work—fiction and non-fiction—you’ll know he’s steeped in the climate conversation. What he describes in the novel is speculative, but speculation is founded on years of research.

So, yeah, James Bradley is a mate. But he’s a mate who knows how to spin an ambitious, powerful, propulsive yarn. My full review of Landfall will feature in the May issue of Locus.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5★s
Landfall is the seventh novel by Australian critic and author, James Bradley. Sydney, some decades into the future: temperatures are soaring, sea levels have risen to inundate low-lying coastal areas, extinctions have reduced biodiversity, and Border Force officers regularly raid residential areas to detain illegals.

Early on a Monday morning, Detective Sergeant Sadiya Azad is alerted by her AI assistant that a child is missing. Casey Mitchell was last seen on the Sunday evening near the Floodline at an unfinished apartment building, apparently part of Horizon’s Badangi project, a contract that the NSW Government has made for a sea wall and low-cost housing. Her beloved toy monkey was found there.

The child’s unemployed stepfather is critical of police efforts, has white supremacist leanings, was disruptive at work, and has a controlling, threatening history with his family. Might the girl have been targeted by someone in conflict with him? Also of concern, a convicted paedophile who was in the area and lacks an alibi.

Sadiya is joined by Detective Senior Constable Paul Findlay, and soon enough, her boss assigns more personnel to help in the search. A silver car was noted at the scene, owned by an employee of Horizon, who is also missing. The one witness who might be able to help police find Casey, who saw her taken, is an illegal teen who understandably fears for his freedom. But his conscience won’t let him ignore the girl’s fate.

And if finding a missing child isn’t urgent enough, Category Five Cyclone Nasreen is due to make landfall in Sydney in mere days, with huge tidal surges expected: manpower has to be siphoned off to help residents prepare for the storm, but if they don’t find Casey before it hits, any hope of finding her alive will be negligible.

Also distracting Sadiya, the difficulty of finding a carer with the increasingly erratic behaviour of her father, Arman, diagnosed with dementia and awaiting a care placement; and resentful junior colleague with a grudge who seems bent on sabotaging her investigation.

When Sadiya and Paul find they also have a murder on their hands that seems to be connected with Casey’s disappearance, the list of potential suspects grows, but the likely motives remain elusive.

Bradley easily evokes his era and setting, and presents several perspectives of the refugee/illegal immigrant experience that have a wholly authentic feel. His portrayal of dementia is also very realistic. With a nail-biting climax, this is a credible Aussie future mystery-thriller.

[Lisa Glanville · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took a star off because the ending was far too abrupt. I think the flow of the narrative needed another chapter.
But the world this novel depicts was fascinating.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an audiobook, I kept looking forward to my commute and return to Sardia.

The local survives, architecture and streets was a treat. But, it was the characterisation I truly enjoyed - fully formed, three-dimensional, and all under pressure.

No one gets off lightly in this dystopian, cli-fi, police procedural, but life and love still flourish, in all its forms.

Wow. I’ll be thinking about this for some time…

[GL F · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captivating. Thrilling. Quietly scary.

LANDFALL is my first crimate (climate x crime) book and I loved it! James Bradley’s world building of a near future where climate change has lived up to the predictions, is second to none and makes for a very unsettling atmosphere. This heightens the impact of the main story in which Detective Azad must find a missing girl before the latest Category 1 cyclone hits Sydney.

I’ll keep thinking about this one for some time.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the eARC!

[Robert Manning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really depressing read with misery and woe on every page. Dystopian settings, characterless characters who I never get any connection with. Unsatisfying from beginning to end.

[Dan P · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn in initially by the really fascinating portrayal of a climate impacted Sydney. As the novel progressed there was a lack of characterisation, repetitive actions and blandness that made the second half feel like a slog. It’s not a very well edited story either. I also struggled to understand the amount of time we spent on Sadiya’s
father and his flashbacks. It would have been interesting in a different genre but felt like filler in the context of this story. In the end, I just didn’t care and was relieved to have finished.

[Unseen Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of Landfall from Netgalley to review.

Rating of 4.25.

Those in the mood for a though-provoking and powerful Australian crime fiction read would do well to check out the excellent 2025 release, Landfall. Written by acclaimed Australian author James Bradley, Landfall was a clever and intense standalone novel that presented a gritty crime fiction scenario in a dark Australian future.

Plot Synopsis:

In an already swamped city, a disastrous weather system looms, making the search to find a missing child urgent.

A missing child.

A city on edge.

Time is running out…

The world is in the grip of climate catastrophe. Sydney has been transformed by rising sea levels, soaring temperatures and rocketing social divide and unrest.

When a small girl on the margins goes missing, Senior Detective Sadiya Azad is assigned to find her. She knows exactly what it is to be displaced, and swallowed by the landscape. A murder at the site of the child’s disappearance suggests a connection and web of corruption, but fear keeps eyes turned and mouths closed.

With few leads to go on and only days until a deadly storm strikes the city, Sadiya and offsider Detective Sergeant Paul Findlay find themselves locked in a race against time.
Chilling and utterly compelling, Landfall is crime writing at its best – and a terrifying vision of the future bearing down on us.

Landfall was an excellent and exciting novel from earlier this year that presented a compelling crime fiction read with a complex and emotionally charged background setting. Taking place in a dystopian version of modern Sydney that is starting to flood due to climate change, Landfall follows Senior Detective Sadiya Azad and her new partner, Detective Sergeant Paul Findlay, as they attempt to find a child who went missing around the Tideline, a slum area of the city that has been most impacted by rising sea levels. However, they soon find their investigation hampered by multiple elements including corrupt policing, uncooperative family members with their own political agendas, rampart social divides and more. This proves to be a strong start to Landfall, and Bradley does a good job of setting up the reality of Sydney, as well as introducing the case and some of the key players.

The story takes an interesting turn when a murdered body is found at a site connected to the child’s disappearance. Assuming the two cases are linked, the protagonists are forced to investigate suspects related to the murder victim and her corporate ties, and the missing child, trying to find out who is responsible, while also dealing with the dark threat of an oncoming tropical cyclone that looks set to destroy half the city. At the same time, several other key perspective character are introduced, including Tasim, a refugee living on the streets, who witnesses the abduction and finds himself dragged into events, and Sadiya’s dementia-suffering father, Arman, whose fractured mind provides greater context to their family’s history, as well as showing the early days of some of the environmental crisis’s impacting the world.

These character-focused storylines combine nicely to create an intriguing and compelling overall narrative, and I liked the various themes and outlooks at the future they contained. The main investigative focus of Sadiya’s narrative is well balanced by the more human stories of Tasim and Arman, and Bradley also makes use of some intense flashback sequences to really build up the tragedy surrounding all these figures. The mystery narrative also goes in some interesting directions, and while the culprit isn’t too surprising, Bradley does a good job focusing on the characters building their case and pulling together the conclusions. Unsurprisingly, the climax of Landfall comes together amid the cyclone, with all the characters facing the storm in different ways. This last part of the book, while dramatic and featuring a high-stakes backdrop, was a little rushed, and could have used a little padding to make it more satisfying. Still, this is a mostly well-balanced narrative that allows for a good conclusion to the main story arc while also allowing Bradley to make all his thematic points.

Landfall ended up being an excellent overall read and Bradley succeeded in pulling together a complex novel with a lot of moving parts to it. The central mystery element of the novel, while compelling on its own, was greatly enhanced by the author’s examinations of the future, which features some dire predictions and warnings, wrapped up in very human stories to make them even more impactful. While an excellent police protagonist, I felt that Sadiya’s personal story was a bit overshadowed by Tasim and Arman’s arcs, especially as Tasmin’s story about losing his family to heatwaves and the harsh journey to Australia, as well as the very realistic depictions of dementia with Arman. All three of these character’s stories are well wrapped up in the final chapters of the book, although I do wish there had been another chapter or two just to showcase what happened in the aftermath. The overall focus on the potential dire future for Sydney and the world was probably the most impressive and notable part of Landfall, and Bradley provided a compelling, if terrifying, portrait of probable events to come that gives this book a fantastic edge that scrapes the edge of overshadowing the main mystery, and allows for quite a powerful overall read.

With its complex characters, intense story, and compelling visions of the future, Landfall by James Bradley was one of the more distinctive Australian novels of 2025, and I was glad I got the chance to check out my first book from the author. An extremely interesting novel that blends crime fiction with social messaging, Landfall comes highly recommended, especially for those with one eye on the future.

An abridged review of this book also ran in the Canberra Weekly on 17 April 2025:
https://unseenlibrary.com/2025/08/20/...

For other exciting reviews and content, check out my blog at:
https://unseenlibrary.com/

[Amy apple · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
The premise of this book was genuinely intriguing. With the crime taking place early on, I was immediately gripped and eager to see where the story would lead.

The world-building was superb — the author painted a vivid, unsettling picture of a dystopian future shaped by catastrophic climate change, known as *the Melt*. I found this aspect compelling and was fully invested in exploring how this world functioned. In that respect, the book didn’t disappoint.

Where it fell short for me was with the characters. I struggled to connect with any of them, which made it hard to truly care about their fates — except for Casey, who, as the central figure of the story, held my interest.. but only as a figure to find.. we don’t get to know her in any case anyways.

My curiosity about what would happen to Casey kept me turning the pages. However, the pacing became sluggish in the middle, only to suddenly accelerate toward the end. The conclusion felt a bit rushed after such a slow build-up. And while the ending tied things up neatly, it felt underwhelming — perhaps a little too tidy for me.

[Pedro L. Fragoso · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Great,’ she said. While she was on the phone they’d travelled onto the Bridge. To the west the broken roofs of the wharfs and the flats on Ballast Point protruded from the water, gleaming in the glare.
    Findlay followed her gaze. ‘Do you ever wonder what it was like before it all went to shit?’
    When Sadiya didn’t reply Findlay continued, his voice distant. ‘My mum was born in Sydney. She used to talk about going to the beach in summer. About how beautiful it was back then.’

‘Do I want to go to Tasmania?’ He looked at her for a second or two. ‘I don’t know. I’d like …’ – he gestured around himself – ‘I’d like to think things here will get better.’
    ‘But?’
    ‘But I’m not sure it’s likely to be all that much different down there in the end.’
    ‘Do you ever wonder what it might be like to live in a world that wasn’t so irretrievably fucked?’ said Sadiya.
    Findlay stared out at the city lights. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘There’s still beer.’
    Sadiya laughed, surprising herself. She lifted her bottle. ‘To silver linings.’
    ‘To silver linings,’ repeated Findlay, smiling.

James Bradley’s Landfall is a terrific piece of grown-up climate fiction—an action thriller that is unapologetically Hitchcockian, with multiple narrative threads tightening in a steady crescendo until a phenomenal finale. Since we seem determined to drive our world toward the dump, we might as well have some serious entertainment on the road to hell. This novel practically begs for a big-budget film adaptation, the kind best experienced in an IMAX theatre.
    Bradley’s prose itself is not the book’s great strength. The writing is competent, serviceable, efficient—it gets the job done (this is not the realm of writers like Jack Vance, Lucius Shepard, or Javier Marías, whose sentences mesmerize even before meaning fully registers). Everything else works magnificently. The plot construction, the pacing, the sharply drawn characters, the protagonist—her background, her humanity, her work ethic—the suffocating bureaucracy, the capitalist nonsense, the unfolding climate catastrophe and its brutally practical consequences, the end-of-the-world stakes, the quest itself: all of it clicks into place with relentless momentum, the result being a novel that is unputdownable.

Almost without thinking she called up the temperature in her lenses and saw it was still more than 35 degrees. Beneath the temperature she saw the forecast for the next few days, the unbroken line of temperatures in the mid to high forties. She closed her eyes, trying not to think about what that meant if Casey was alive somewhere without air conditioning. In her first year as a constable she had attended a welfare check in one of the tent cities out west. It was December, the heat already extreme. After asking for directions they found their way to a container, its front locked tight. They had pounded on the front without response, then cut the lock. Even as the door swung open the smell told her what they were going to find, but it turned out to be even worse than she had imagined. Inside it was impossibly hot, and by the door lay three bodies, the largest a girl, perhaps eight or nine, hair cropped close to her skull, the next a boy, half that. And between them the naked form of a baby.

Eventually he reached a highway, which he crossed and then followed for a while before turning down the side street where the van had been parked. The street sloped down, away from the highway; at its end the water gleamed malignantly in the sun. On both sides were an assortment of abandoned industrial buildings, many still bearing signs advertising businesses long since closed or relocated: a car repair shop, a courier depot adorned with a cartoon figure of a man in a uniform, an empty gym, its windows smashed in and cabling hanging from its ceiling. He stared in the windows as he passed, searching for something that might lead him to the girl, until at last he reached the point where the street disappeared into the water.

Lowering her screen she leaned back. The night before, the forecast for today had been 47 degrees, with humidity in the territory that could kill. Yet they still didn’t have a clue where Casey was, or even whether she was still alive. What they did know was that whoever killed Nina took Casey.

Once, this would have been semi-rural, farmland; ravaged by the heat and fire, it was now a wasteland.

‘So, you’re not only not going to help us, you’re going to stop us from helping ourselves,’ he said.

So many waystations to a present he no longer understood.

[Robert Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australian author James Bradley has long been interested in exploring the impacts of climate change through fiction with books like Clade and Ghost Species. His latest book Landfall is pure climate fiction crossed with a police procedural. While in Landfall he depicts a possible future Australia, Bradley is also interested in the impacts of a changing climate on other countries and the resulting movement of people to find safety.
Landfall opens by the Tideline, an area of Sydney where rising sealevels have made some low lying coastal areas uninhabitable or the refuge for the poor and dispossessed who live on upper stories of flooded buildings. Detective Sadiya Azad and her partner Paul Findlay are dispatched to the area to investigate the disappearance of a five-year-old girl. At the same time, Tasim, a refugee living on the streets of Sydney sees a young girl being put in the back of a van and despite having nothing, is determined to try and rescue her. Adding pressure to the whole situation, there is an impending tropical cyclone which is predicted to hammer an already fragile city.
Like any good crime novel, the investigative procedure is a framework which Bradley uses to explore his milieu. Azad and Findlay can range around the city although they start to step on some toes when they discover the potential involvement of a high powered employee of a company that builds detention centres and new weather-proof developments. But through this he also hangs the backstories of Azad, her father Arman, now suffering from dementia and reliving his younger years in his mind, and Tasim who all came to Australia as climate refugees, forced from their countries by killer heatwaves and destructive flooding.
Bradley provides plenty to chew on thematically in Landfall. From a frighteningly real future Sydney, to the way Australia treats refugees, to the usual rounds of development and corruption at the expense of the poor, to dealing with a loved one with dementia to coercive control. Bradley bakes these issues, where he can, into the narrative but that does make the whole venture a little shaggy. Arman’s story, for example, while interesting, has not real connection to the overall plot other than the fact that he lives with Sayida and this makes her life more complicated.
If Landfall falls down anywhere it is that it is not a particularly surprising crime story. The investigators, seem to spend a lot of their time going round in circles to learn things they could have learnt earlier. And the payoff, while possibly satisfying for the reader and tending to cathartic as it takes place at the height of the promised mega-storm, does not realty make any sense. But this is really a book where you come for the mystery and stay for the depiction of what feels like a terrifyingly accurate portrait of a potential global future.

[Jackie McMillan · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 stars)
"This place always seemed about to wash away, but it never did: instead the inhabitants repaired and rebuilt, finding new ways to adapt." Australian crime fiction, Aussie noir, is my bag. I particularly love books situated in the landscape, about places I've seen. At one point I probably would have called Landfall speculative fiction, as it's set in future Sydney, at a moment where ice caps have melted, cyclones have flooded the city, and another one is imminently about to hit: "The first rainy season after the Melt began. All over the world the weather had gone haywire, the first heat storms, cyclones, fire and floods, tornados in places they had never been seen before."

But with with people still living in tents from flooding in the not-so-distant past being threatened by a cyclone in Brisbane this very year, can we even call this a speculative environment anymore? This meant I got invested in the environment Bradley created very quickly, because I already wonder "what it might be like to live in a world that wasn’t so irretrievably fucked?" Bradley very cleverly makes environmental critique softer by writing speculatively about the here and now: "the truth was things had come unstuck long before, and this unstoppable tide of catastrophe was just the future that had been created decades before catching up with the world."

Landfall is sensitive to class differences and the way they intersect with fear of the police: "The eldest was a girl about the same age as Rafi – young enough, Sadiya hoped, to be approachable without triggering the suspicion and fear the police usually encountered in the Floodline." Bradley also is kind to migrants, explaining how an increasingly uncertain world means illegal migration is often the sanest choice: "But he had also heard stories about people who had made it to the cities and now lived illegally. Either way it had to be better than here. It had to be better than waiting to die in the next heatwave or storm." Perhaps the only group for whom the novel increases rather than decreases stigma for is people who use drugs: "She knew enough addicts to know their displays of sentiment were usually about absolving themselves." However these comments come from the perspective of police, who have been taught all along people who use drugs are criminals.

Probably the most beautiful part of the novel was about dementia, where the increasingly uncertain environment stirred up memories of migration for Arman, which overlay with the water-based world he finds himself lost within. He's a very tenderly written character: "He looked down at his hands, saw the hands of an old man, wondered whose they were, how he had stopped being a child, by the river, by the water?" Great book!

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5★s
Landfall is the seventh novel by Australian critic and author, James Bradley. The audio version is narrated by Sarah Roberts. Sydney, some decades into the future: temperatures are soaring, sea levels have risen to inundate low-lying coastal areas, extinctions have reduced biodiversity, and Border Force officers regularly raid residential areas to detain illegals.

Early on a Monday morning, Detective Sergeant Sadiya Azad is alerted by her AI assistant that a child is missing. Casey Mitchell was last seen on the Sunday evening near the Floodline at an unfinished apartment building, apparently part of Horizon’s Badangi project, a contract that the NSW Government has made for a sea wall and low-cost housing. Her beloved toy monkey was found there.

The child’s unemployed stepfather is critical of police efforts, has white supremacist leanings, was disruptive at work, and has a controlling, threatening history with his family. Might the girl have been targeted by someone in conflict with him? Also of concern, a convicted paedophile who was in the area and lacks an alibi.

Sadiya is joined by Detective Senior Constable Paul Findlay, and soon enough, her boss assigns more personnel to help in the search. A silver car was noted at the scene, owned by an employee of Horizon, who is also missing. The one witness who might be able to help police find Casey, who saw her taken, is an illegal teen who understandably fears for his freedom. But his conscience won’t let him ignore the girl’s fate.

And if finding a missing child isn’t urgent enough, Category Five Cyclone Nasreen is due to make landfall in Sydney in mere days, with huge tidal surges expected: manpower has to be siphoned off to help residents prepare for the storm, but if they don’t find Casey before it hits, any hope of finding her alive will be negligible.

Also distracting Sadiya, the difficulty of finding a carer with the increasingly erratic behaviour of her father, Arman, diagnosed with dementia and awaiting a care placement; and resentful junior colleague with a grudge who seems bent on sabotaging her investigation.

When Sadiya and Paul find they also have a murder on their hands that seems to be connected with Casey’s disappearance, the list of potential suspects grows, but the likely motives remain elusive.

Bradley easily evokes his era and setting, and presents several perspectives of the refugee/illegal immigrant experience that have a wholly authentic feel. His portrayal of dementia is also very realistic. With a nail-biting climax, this is a credible Aussie future mystery-thriller.

[Liisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (removing one star because I felt the ending was a little rushed)

Set in a flooded, heat-stricken Sydney of 2050, Landfall is a gripping fusion of police procedural and climate fiction — a story that thrills even as it unsettles. 🌊☀️

When five-year-old Casey Mitchell disappears from the Floodline — a submerged, makeshift district where Sydney’s poorest now live — Detective Sadiya Azad is called to investigate. But with a super-cyclone due to hit in five days, and resources stretched thin, the search becomes a desperate race against time. ⏳

Bradley’s vision of a climate-ravaged city feels terrifyingly plausible: overgrown IKEAs, rotting high-rises, and temperatures that make life almost unliveable. Against this backdrop, Sadiya — a climate refugee herself — battles not just bureaucracy and corruption, but her own ghosts. The dynamic between her and her new partner, Findlay, is refreshingly grounded, built on trust rather than cliché.

What truly elevates Landfall is its humanity. Through the intertwining perspectives of Sadiya, her dementia-suffering father Arman, and Tasim, a teenage refugee on the run, Bradley explores loss, compassion, and moral courage in a world collapsing under greed and neglect. It’s a story about small acts of goodness — the kind that might still save us. 💔🌍

Tense, cinematic, and hauntingly relevant, Landfall proves that the end of the world might look less like an explosion and more like a slow, drowning silence.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slow-burn start that still grabbed my attention. The tension built steadily until it really exploded in the last chapter. Each chapter recounted one of the five days that Casey was missing, and each of the five days involved a collection of characters.
However, I was a bit disappointed with the ending. It jusy ended so quickly!!!

In an already swamped city, a disastrous weather system looms, making the search to find a missing child urgent. A missing child. A city on edge. Time is running out… The world is in the grip of climate catastrophe. Sydney has been transformed by rising sea levels, soaring temperatures and rocketing social divide and unrest. When a small girl on the margins goes missing, Senior Detective Sadiya Azad is assigned to find her. She knows exactly what it is to be displaced, and swallowed by the landscape. A murder at the site of the child’s disappearance suggests a connection and web of corruption, but fear keeps eyes turned and mouths closed. With few leads to go on and only days until a deadly storm strikes the city, Sadiya and offsider Detective Sergeant Paul Findlay find themselves locked in a race against time. Chilling and utterly compelling, Landfall is crime writing at its best – and a terrifying vision of the future bearing down on us. 'Australia’s literary Nostradamus' - The Weekend Australian

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

One week into 2025 and I'm already on my second Australian climate fiction novel. Trend alert!
Set in near future Australia, the core of this novel is a police procedural mystery. Detective Azad is searching for a little girl, reported missing amongst the poorest and most marginalised area of the city.
This is interspersed with POV scenes from Arman, Azad's father, and Tasim a refugee who becomes involved in the case. Arman's scenes were moving, and Tasim's flashbacks to his home country and journey to Australia were harrowing and horrifying. Bradley, as always, creates imagery of climate catastrophe so well. These were probably my favourite part of the novel. However, they were also not really relevant to the main story. There didn't really seem to be any reason why the novel needed to be set in the future. We have extreme climate events and climate refugees already, which could have been used to frame the story. I think if I had expected this going into the book, I wouldn't have found it so frustrating. So I still recommend this book - just know that you are getting two different things from it.
3.5 stars.

[Gaby Meares · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book falls into a new sub-genre: crimate (crime + climate fiction). It’s set in a not too distant future, where rising water levels and soaring temperatures have made many parts of the world uninhabitable. In Sydney, areas near where I live are now underwater. The poor and dispossessed struggle to survive, living in upper stories of tower blocks, with no respite from the searing heat. Climate refugees add to the already overcrowded conditions, and overheated emotions.

When a five year old child goes missing, Senior Detective Sadiya Azad and her partner are in a race against time to find her before a catastrophic storm hits Sydney.

This is a tough book to read. It portrays a devastated world, and having it set right on my doorstep was uncomfortable. Like so many recent books, the pace is uneven. It starts well, dips a bit in the middle and then rushes to the end. I can’t say I enjoyed it, it was too depressing and close to the reality we will soon face, but it is a page-turner!

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

James Bradley has taken his cli-fi into a new area for him, writing a crime novel, set in Sydney in the future, when the city has been partly inundated by water due to rising tides and has been battered and partly destroyed by climate induced cyclones.

With a new cyclone about to hit the city, Senior Detective Sadiya Azad is called on to find Chloe, a missing child, last seen at the Floodline, the area of the city bordering the water.

As the storm approaches, she and her assistant Paul Findlay have to work out whether she has been abused by her mother's violent boyfriend, or whether she has become mixed up with unscrupulous developers or has just disappeared because of the pervasive social unrest as a result of the inequalities of life in a time of climate change.

The novel was somewhat disappointing, neither the best crime novel nor the strongest depiction of our dystopian climate induced future. A noble enterprise to get the climate message out, but just too ho hum as a crime procedural.

I wish I could have liked it more.

[Mercedes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first cli-fi book - I didn’t even know climate fiction was a genre. But I’m so on board. This book filled me with such a creeping sense of unease (in a good, bookish way) probably exacerbated by the fact I read it during a week-long downpour.

Set in the near-future, it follows senior detective Sadiya Azad who is on the trail of a missing five-year-old who disappeared while playing near her home in a part of Sydney now known as the Tideline. What makes the hunt all the more desperate is the looming mega-storm heading Sydney’s way, a weather event that is becoming all too regular. To top it off, Sadiya’s search is hampered by police politics, a corruption ring she’s uncovered and a difficult home life involving her dad who’s suffering from late-stage dementia.

While this book holds up entirely as fantastic crime fiction, it’s elevated by the setting of a city in the depth of a climate catastrophe. Sydney is almost unrecognisable, with buildings ravaged by floods and storms left derelict with missing roofs. And its citizens are living with a new reality as deadly heatwaves push temperatures above 50 degrees leaving thousands dead.

With themes that also include the treatment of immigrants plus a new minority group left displaced by climate catastrophe, this book is not science fiction, it’s a dire warning.

[Maree · Rating 5 out of 5]

I though this book was excellent. It is a well threaded blend of murder mystery and enviromental warning. Most enviro warning books are like a hammer hitting you on the head every page but this one sits quietly in the background of the investigation into the murder of a young women and the disappearance of a child. It may be quiet but you notice the weather as each page turns. I live in Australia where the weather goes into the high 30s regularly and occasionally into the 40's so I can tell you that 52 is a death sentence. Its hard to breathe when its 42! The mystery develops beautifully from barely any information through the dogged investigation of Sadiya and Findley. These two are terrific characters but we only get to delve into Sadiya's background. I hope there is a chance for these two to star in another book.

[Alex Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another very decent read from one of my favourite local authors. Here James Bradley combines two of my favourite genres - near-future sci-fi, and cop stories - and like any decent author, goes well beyond the constraints of both. Set in my own stamping ground of Tempe and the (rapidly drowning) shores of Botany Bay, its a well-written, well-researched and entirely believable (if grim) view of a world that we are likely to be living in the next 30-50 years. Super to read this type of book set locally, and fantastic to see Bradley continuing to write at this level. Looking forward to his next book.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

5 stars out of 5. I loved this book. Landfall explores multiple issues while providing the reader with an unputdownable story set in a futuristic Sydney.

Unlike other futuristic worlds, this world has been severely impacted by sea level rises and multiple natural disasters, making for an eye opening read all while maintaining the readers interest in the main plot of the book, the search for a missing child.

Thank you netgalley and Penguin Random House for the advanced reader copy.

[Carly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book! It's a typical whodunnit and from that perspective is a bit of a slow start and not particularly novel. The dystopian setting in Sydney of people living in a new world lead by climate disaster is the real page turner. The rising sea levels, soaring temperatures and the resultant climate refugees (their place in society) and increasing poverty gaps are fascinating. The flashbacks to each character's lives leading up to the tipping point meant I charged through this book

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am rating this based on the first 40 or so pages, I honestly couldn't go any further, it was that bad!
I haven't DNF'd a book in years, but this was seriously painful to read. The writing is awful, reoeating the same thing several times even in the short amount I read. The dialogue between characters was atrocious and painful to read.
Very disappointing as I thought the premise sounded really interesting.

[Anomilie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. It seemed very disjointed. I would have liked more world building in the beginning. I got very distracted questioning in what world would Bunnings have a tarp over it, yet there was ample funding for police resources. Also, in a world with so much disaster, why is one missing child such a massive focus. I also found the father's backstory superfluous and the changes between characters' perspectives disjointed.

[Marg Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't wait to read this book. I'm somewhat of a fan of JB's books. I enjoyed this, though not as much as his other books. The police procedural seemed a bit disorderly. And whilst I appreciated the convergence of the climate disaster with that thriller aspect, something didn't quite gel/work for me there. 3.5 ⭐️ rounded up

[Jenny Esots · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dystopian guilty pleasure read.
Australian author - which is good to see, as Australia is usually completely non represented in end of the world scenarios.
A page turner police procedural character study of a world in disarray - which looking increasingly more likely.
A 5 year old child is missing from a slum area, which is practically underwater and a category 5 cyclone is coming in 2 - 3 days time.
Each person has a backstory and not all the loose ends will be neatly packed away.

[Gwof Golden · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it does a credible job of imagining a world severely affected by climate disaster (both the changes to the physical world and how people interact), the core crime thriller narrative is full of underdeveloped characters and a hasty plot. None of the descriptive wonder I found in his previous work (Deep Water). Didn't finish it

[Graham Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird premise .. The world is in the grip of a climate catastrophe. Sydney has been transformed by rising sea levels .. and a child goes missing. It almost works.

But there is so much unnecessary backstory about the lead detective's father and his history, and about the background of the boy who witnessed the disappearance of the missing child.

[Tricia H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure about this one. Enjoyed the glimpse of what a future Sydney could look like after a climate catastrophe.
Themes of displacement, dementia, poverty, greed and cruel immigration control were disturbing but sadly relevant in the world we’re in today.