Reviewed by Ian Miller for Readers' Favorite

Another catastrophic "annihilation of civilization" book. A comet collides with the sun, setting off tremendous stellar indigestion that wipes out most of the Earth, splits continents, causes huge mutations, and so on. A number of people are selected and saved in a deep underground facility, with indefinite food, etc., stored. Some more survive through being on nuclear submarines, protected by the ocean depths. Now we come to one of the chilling parts of this story: the various governments knew what was going to happen, but they did not warn anyone. Those who survive the stellar blasts have to survive intense radiation consistent with that from fission products, and certainly not from the "annihilation mechanism". How did that get here? The author hints that this occurred because governments, with all the warning they had, did not even shut down nuclear power plants, or warn the nuclear submarines not to assume a nuclear war had broken out and hence start one anyway.

The story flows well, at no point does it drag and, given the situation, the settings are really imaginative. The way two sets of people, the prepared and those that have had to tough it out, deal with the subsequent environment is cleverly planned and described. The writing is clear, and while there are some editing and grammatical issues, they are easily overlooked, at least by me. The climax moves well, and does not follow the "obvious" line that only too many authors would follow, so top marks there. On the negative side, though, very little emotion is shown, and the main function of the characters is to move the plot forward. Characterization is through what the characters do, which is good, but because the conversations are brief and most of the action is to progress the plot rapidly, the characters may be difficult to see. Indeed, one of the best-drawn characters is actually a giant wolf. To summarize, an interesting read that is easily read, but not one for engaging with the characters.