Opposite Identicals

Opposite Identicals is a climate-change science fiction novel that follows Nova and Joule, identical twins, whose lives were upended when their parents got an exciting research post looking into genetically modified SuperCrops. This book addresses some real potential impacts of climate change (extended droughts and collapse of current food systems featuring prominently) without dwelling in too much climate anxiety, letting the adventure plot shine through. It also avoids romantic subplots, allowing the relationships between Nova and Joule, and the GMO SuperCrops and the lands on which they are grown to drive the adventure.

Nova and Joule are not fully opposite identical twins, but their interests follow different routes. Nova is quiet, loves being outdoors, and, being easily over-stimulated, wears earmuffs to help muffle the world around her. Joule is outgoing and longs to return to the city; she misses her friends, hates being in nature, and has even signed up for a beta release of a teleportation app so she can get back to her old life as soon as possible. Put another way, Joule cannot wait for her parents’ research post to end, and Nova would love it if it went on forever. One day when out fishing, Joule sees something impossible – Nova’s fishing rod was sucked into what looked like a tiny black hole in the middle of the lake. Nova and their parents brush it off as Joule’s imagination, but Joule knows what she saw – she just can’t explain it. Later that night, while Joule had sent Nova out of their room so she could chat with her friends back home, a massive thunderstorm rolls through, ending the ongoing drought that area had been experiencing. The sudden rainfall, unfortunately, leads to the opening of a giant sinkhole under Joule and Nova’s bedroom, plunging Joule into a mysterious series of caves and caverns under her house and the adjacent land. As Joule works to find a way to escape, Nova fights to go find her amid pressure from local police and government to keep the emergency as quiet as possible.

From here the story splits, and the reader both follows Joule (and the family’s pet chihuahua, Atom) through her attempts to escape the underground cave system, and Nova above ground as she does her best to find out what is going on with the search for Joule. As Joule starts encountering mysterious life forms in the cave, Nova finds out the search has been called off – likely due to pressure from the company behind the SuperCrops to keep their crop test out of the media and public eye. Joule, of course, makes it out through her own ingenuity and into the waiting arms of Nova who is about to start her own search of the sinkholes popping up near her property. The sisters, happily reunited, have a new appreciation of their differences, and their parents have a new research posting: understanding how the SuperCrops interacted with the natural ecosystem to create a massive network of underground tunnels and caves.

The setting of 2041 is just far enough in the future that I believe we could need massively engineered crops to ensure food availability – as I write this, my community is in the midst of an “exceptional drought” – but not quite far enough out that I believe there could be a teleportation app on a smartwatch (which is just launched in its testing phase before Joule is swallowed up by the sinkhole). This won’t necessarily take readers out of the plot but may age the book prematurely as we quickly approach its setting. The near-future setting also makes believable that not much has changed as far as our lives and technology – smartwatches are a bit more advanced, climate change has continued to progress, but the lives of young adults are largely the same, allowing readers to easily identify with Joule and Nova. It should also be noted that Nova is written in a way that could be read as neuro-divergent, though she is never explicitly described in this way. She does always wear her signature pair of earmuffs, and references are made to her being easily overstimulated without their muffling effect on the world. While the representation of neurodiversity isn’t explicit, Nova’s use of earmuffs as a way of navigating the world provides positive representation for anyone who finds their world over-stimulating at times and may need external help, like a pair of earmuffs or earplugs, to successfully navigate the world.

Opposite Identicals centres female protagonists and will appeal to readers interested in family relationships, dystopian futures, and adventures that come without a side of romance. Joule and Nova are believable tweens, both in their voices and in their relationship dynamics, and provide engaging narration of their adventure.