After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress

It generally makes my suspension of disbelief collapse pretty quickly. I generally don't like those, simply because they always lead to paradoxes and other impossible situations. It all comes down to personal preferences mind you, it doesn't necessarily make the book a poor one.įirst, Kress wrote a time travel story. Kress does two things in this novel I don't like. As she gets closer to the truth, her mathematics leads her to even more disturbing discoveries.Īfter she finished the novel, my girlfriend said there were a few things I should ignore to really enjoy the book and she was right.

She believes there is a connection between the disappearances, a mathematical pattern that allows her to predict the next attempt. Brilliant mathematician Julie Khan is working with he police on finding the perpetrator. In 2013, the kidnappings have not gone unnoticed.

Time is clearly running out for the survivors. The Grabs, as these expeditions are called are getting closer together and more frantic. One piece of Tesslie technology that may change all this is a time travelling device that allows the survivors to travel to before the fall and snatch children or supplies. Too few to prevent inbreeding in the long run and crippled by radiation related genetic damage, humanity looks doomed. Despite their best efforts, prospects are not good. A race of aliens known as the Tesslies built this shelter and has provided the inhabitants with the basics necessary for survival.

Rounded up in a structure called the Shell, they are protected from the radioactive wasteland that is all that remains of the earth. In 2035 a handful of survivors are all that remain of humanity. I think it is not her strongest work by a long shot but certainly worth reading. It is an interesting novel(la?), one that can't have been easy to sell given its length, but I do have some reservations about it. Fortunately it is a quick read so I got it back in a few days and have managed to read it myself. She has developed a real appreciation of Kress' writing, quite unusual for someone who doesn't read a lot of science fiction. It arrived in record time (thank you Andrea!) but unfortunately I lost it almost as quickly, when my girlfriend snapped it up to read. Recently, I won a copy of Nancy Kress' latest novel After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall over at the Little Red Reviewer.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress