In Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds bring their longstanding engagement with the region into a vivid account of a rapidly changing North. From its first pages, the book echoes the often-heard expression that “there are many Arctics” by juxtaposing the polished imagery often presented at international gatherings (such as the Arctic Circle) with the lived realities of places like the industrial town of Nikel in Northern Russia or remote settlements in Greenland. There, everyday life is shaped by the material and symbolic legacies of earlier interventions, such as industrial ruins or unfulfilled state promises. This attentiveness to multiplicity situates the book firmly against enduring visions of the Arctic as remote, empty, or frozen in time.

One of the book’s most compelling qualities is this movement between scales: the Arctic appears simultaneously as a space of global relevance and as a region shaped by intimate, situated, often more-than-human relations. Throughout the volume, geopolitical statements are set alongside residents’ remarks and field notes, allowing readers to see how international ambitions and narratives encounter everyday life in northern communities. This interplay of global forces and local narratives brings into focus the Arctic not only as a strategic frontier but also as a complex and diverse social and ecological landscape. At some points, particularly in later chapters, the analysis leans more strongly toward geopolitical processes, and local interpretations become less visible. However, these moments also help the reader to see how productive the book’s core juxtaposition can be.

The metaphor of the “unfrozen” Arctic becomes a powerful conceptual thread bridging the variety of themes discussed in the volume. The region is becoming unfrozen in a literal sense as climate change reshapes ice, environments, and transportation routes. However, it is also becoming unfrozen metaphorically, as a space no longer imagined as “filled with animals rather than people” (p. 24) and outside of history. As Bennett and Dodds note in Chapter 9, “Nothing About Us Without Us,” Arctic Indigenous Peoples “challenge the notion that they are frozen in a snow globe and unable to keep up with climate change, geopolitics, or technology” (p. 225). The strength of this volume is the masterful interweaving of literal and metaphorical unfreezing. As the authors observe, changes in ice “do not just affect mobility; they affect where people can live” (p. 257). Changing ice conditions, therefore, open broader questions about who shapes trajectories of change in the Arctic and how the everyday realities of its residents will be changing in the near future.

A particularly important contribution of Unfrozen lies in its engagement with persistent imaginaries of the Arctic as empty or as primarily defined by its pristine wilderness. This vision, as the authors note at the beginning of Chapter 3, is “one of the hardest stereotypes to shift” (p. 54). These imaginaries remain strikingly present in contemporary transformations, such as the green transition and the embrace of digital infrastructures. The idea of the Arctic as an empty, abundant, or available space continues to shape policy and investment decisions about the region, such as the construction of data centers or wind power parks. However, it is important to bear in mind that this new infrastructure enters an already long-inhabited landscape shaped by earlier interactions. Northern residents who oppose wind turbines compare them to “weeds” (p. 83), symbolically including them in the established web of more-than-human connections as an invasive presence.

The volume’s thematic range is remarkably broad. Bennett and Dodds move across contested definitions of the region, infrastructural transformations, regional histories, the evolution of intergovernmental cooperation, contemporary geopolitical tensions and hybrid warfare, debates over “green colonialism,” and the diverse forms of Indigenous sovereignty and collaboration shaping Arctic governance. Across the chapters, themes often treated separately, such as environmental change, security, governance, and infrastructure, emerge as deeply intertwined. For example, climate change appears not only as an environmental crisis but also as a geopolitical condition shaping alliances, tensions, and policy trajectories today.

Given this thematic variety and the emphasis on interconnections, the book provides a comprehensive and accessible entry point into major debates and challenges shaping the Arctic today. Although the text is rich in detail and references, the authors consistently strive to make the narrative accessible to a wide audience. This commitment to accessibility is one of the book’s strengths, even if it may occasionally lead to moments when nuances are omitted for the sake of argumentative clarity.

The final chapter, “The End of an Epoch,” turns toward the future and asks whether the Arctic is entering a phase in which the relatively stable cooperation that characterized earlier decades is increasingly weakening. Contemporary geopolitical tensions reshape not only diplomatic relations but also the everyday lives of Arctic residents who have to bear their consequences. Rather than offering definitive conclusions, the book leaves readers with open questions about what futures will emerge and what stories will later be told about this period of rapid transformation. Earlier imaginaries, such as fears of a nuclear winter casting the Arctic into a forever-frozen state, remind us that the region has long been the subject of anxieties and hopes. Today, as Bennett and Dodds suggest, the choices made by states, communities, and institutions will shape whether the Arctic’s future unfolds through conflict or collaboration.

Unfrozen offers a rich and timely account of the changing Arctic. Its ability to synthesize complex geopolitical debates while bringing forward lived realities, often through very down-to-earth interactions at a bus stop or in a bar, makes it an important contribution not only to political science but to the broader field of Arctic studies. For scholars examining infrastructural transformations in the North, it challenges “frozen” representations of the Arctic as wild and pristine but also as abundant and awaiting development. As new technologies enter the region, it is especially important to learn from earlier interventions and attend to the place and its residents. The authors rightly remind us that the Arctic needs not conquer, but care.