Kat Cubed (Paperback or Softback)

How much does your world affect who you are? In Kat Garcia's world only the Rocky Mountains are above sea level and the sun is hot enough to kill. She goes through a mysterious portal seeking weapons to keep her friends safe from the remnants of the decayed government. In Kaitlin Garcia's world the Unified States is constantly bombarded by severe storms. She goes through a mysterious portal to implement her climate mitigation strategy before her world becomes uninhabitable. In Katherine Garcia's world only draconian government control over the citizens has kept the droughts, floods, and diseases from killing everyone. She goes through a mysterious portal seeking nuclear fusion to throw off the oppressive governmental yoke. When the actions of the three Kats start to destroy the universes, can they join forces and save them?

In Smith's (Reality Alternatives, 2016, etc.) sci-fi tale, an experiment opens portals to alternate universes and three variations of the same young woman struggle in environments warped by climate change.
The opening of this book lays out three permutations of the year 2100, after global warming has damaged Earth. "Universe 1" offers a scorched landscape where young, semiferal Kat Garcia scrounges for sustenance in the ruins with a few other survivors. In the more livable Colorado of "Universe 2," college student Kaitlin Garcia anticipates a future with her meteorologist boyfriend while researching a remedy for climate change even as superstorms and rising sea levels batter the United States. In a police-state "Universe 3," elite scientist Katherine Garcia aspires to create a machine that can generate limitless energy while she deals with swarming surveillance robots and pressure to join a government-mandated dating and breeding program. A quantum-energy fluke opens portals between the three realities. Now the triune heroines can not only communicate and assist one another, but also physically visit other universes--along with assorted lovers, persecutors, and pursuers. But the aftereffects of the rifts are starting to make the multiverse come apart at the seams. Although this isn't a comedy, Smith delivers the sci-fi equivalent of a high-speed slamming-door stage play in the Lend Me a Tenor vein, full of scampering mix-ups, look-alike characters, and quick entrances and exits. As in such productions, things start off sedate but soon accelerate crazily. It's an understatement to say that it's tough keeping the characters, causes, and effects straight from universe to universe. Also, the plot relies increasingly on interventions of a sassy, deus ex machina artificial intelligence named Pandora, who learns to transcend universes and pull off godlike deliverance on demand. Despite the threat of Einsteinian, trans-dimensional total destruction, things wrap up a little too neatly. Overall, though, Smith, a physicist, effectively invests the tangled yarn with brio, imagination, and doses of real-life science.
A wheels-within-wheels yarn that isn't perfect but sure takes readers for a spin.--Kirkus Reviews