SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

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Spoiler thread is now open for business! :)

As I said in the no spoiler discussion, I really loved the way this book describes the community. It's a very intimate story, mostly taking place in a single small village over the course of one winter, and the amount of detailed description serves that well.

I struggled a lot with the antagonist, though. I thought the scene where he first appears at the village was incredibly well-written - I felt so much dread and anxiety about the decision they had to make about whether to let him come in. But from there, I felt like the antagonist's storyline lacked the level of detail and immediacy that made the rest of the book so good. I didn't necessarily think the villain was a caricature, exactly, but he didn't feel fully real. To me, he didn't seem exaggerated, but he felt more like a symbol or representation of something rather than a character, which took away from the potential threat.

Well said, Kaa. I felt the same. I absolutely loved the prose and atmosphere of the book. The severity of the situation unobtrusively crept into the mind of protagonists and reader.
The rather simple take on the "baddie" afterwards was a crash of this atmosphere. And the end felt strange (I think I have to re-read the last chapters once more).

Gabi wrote: "The severity of the situation unobtrusively crept into the mind of protagonists and reader."

Yes, exactly! This was just so well done.

I echo the criticism about the bad guy. He appears to be too much of a stock character of a white survivalist. The best bad guys are not totally evil. For example, Sherlock in the Merchant of Venice. The monster in Frankenstein is another example. The culture of the Anishinaabe is the star of the novel. The author criticizes modern society by comparing Evan and his brother. Evan is a strong family man who has retained the old values of the Anishinaabe. His brother on the other hand sits around being lazy and playing video games.

I think this suffered a bit for me because I'd just read Marrow Thieves which I think is a stronger work of literature. The bad guy and the cannibalism were just not used as well as I think they could have been.

But I did really like the smaller moments with these characters--them stumbling over words and traditions, trying to teach the kids how to count, being loving partners, friends, and families during a major crisis. And the dread around the time that the villain was introduced was palpable.

I thought this started strong, but the last half of the novel didn't work for me. As stated above, Scott was just too much of a cartoon villain. What I liked about the book was learning about the culture and life on the reservation. The actual plot didn't do much for me.

I enjoyed the glimpse into Anishinaabe life and culture. However, those seemed to be both the strength and the weakness of the book. The simplicity of the language felt authentic, but it also came across as unsophisticated. Having a few scenes with routine activities would have been fine, but there were more than a few. The constant evaluation of everything as following tradition or defying tradition was too simple-minded, and then to have the plot and the characters bear out that lesson felt artificial. It would have been fine for a tale told around a fire, but less so for a published novel distributed to a worldwide audience.

Despite the criticisms above, I generally enjoyed the reading experience.

Well I just finished listening and ai wonder if that is perhaps the best format - I didn’t have many complaints and it maybe enhances the story round the Fire feel.
Also getting to hear all the names and little ainishinabee words made it a very immersive tale

Rachel, I agree that the audiobook was excellent - the narrator was very good and this was a good story for listening.

Thanks to others for the comments, it's helping me sort out what I didn't like about the Scott storyline. I'm realizing it really wasn't anything about Scott himself that I disliked - I'm actually fine with him being a complete villain, and even being more of a symbol or representation than a character. For me, that works with the theme of the story. This isn't actually a post-apocalypse story, this is a story about a group of people being given a chance to return to life before their apocalypse. Scott represents both a mythological monster and the threat of continuing in the apocalyptic world brought to Indigenous people of North America by European colonizers, and in that role he doesn't need redeeming characteristics.

Where depth is missing for me is actually in the members of the community who choose to follow Scott. As Chris said, it feels like the author has set up a very simple dichotomy between tradition and defying tradition. The reasons characters like Evan's brother choose to follow Scott felt shallow - I wanted more depth and more understanding of their reasons for making the choices they did. They were the ones who felt caricatured to me.

I am going to go ahead and echo pretty much everything that has been said already. I loved the culture tidbits woven in throughout and think the author did a great job of building up the tension. That being said, I found Scott quite problematic and frankly a boring villain.

There was this huge, slow set up... I was thinking maybe it would be zombies or just groups of survivalists roaming trying to kill each other, etc... But it ended up being just ONE creepy white guy that wanted to eat dead bodies and it was just like... Why is the entire community allowing this guy to stay?? Why is he allowed to do whatever he wants? No one really stood up to him until the very end.

Like Kaa, I also didn't understand what hold Scott had over other members of the community and why people like Evan's brother followed him.

I feel like by making Scott the main "problem" the community had to deal with in the latter half of the book, it kind of took the tension out of the story.

I loved all the things that people are mentioning favorably. But I actually found Scott to be a compelling and convincing antagonist -- in part because I think real life people similar to him (white nationalists, white survivalists, MAGA types) fashion themselves and even see themselves in very cartoonish ways; and in part because I read him as a stand in for a certain white mindset about land ownership, presumed superiority, and violence. In this sense, I read his appeal to some members of the community as something akin to the "appeal" or the draw of internalized racism. N. K. Jemisin had a great Twitter thread yesterday about the appeal of "snack" narratives -- easy, simple nuggets dividing the world into overly simple stark contrasts. And I think his lure was something along those lines.

I thought Scott was fine but not used fully. I wanted to see more of the pull, the way that people gravitate towards things that hurt them, how privilege gets scary when questioned and so on.

Allison wrote: "I thought Scott was fine but not used fully. I wanted to see more of the pull, the way that people gravitate towards things that hurt them, how privilege gets scary when questioned and so on."

Definitely! Though leaving out that representation helped underscore the ease with which he began to coerce and control, and that made him, for me, all the more creepy and terrifying.

Travis - I totally agree

I enjoyed the descriptions of the culture and understood the difficulty of old tradition and modern society clashing. But, I did find some of this book quite boring... those endless town meetings for instance. The book also felt like it went on very slowly until Scott arrived, then suddenly the tempo picked up and the story was no longer as detailed as it was before. I would have liked more on how Scott corrupted the people and what the council was doing about it all. It didn't seem realistic that they would just give in and let Scott do whatever the hell he wanted to. I also would have liked more of Megan's story, so I could understand her better and her motivations. And what was in the pot? I see no reason to keep that hidden from the reader.
The epilogue was set too far in the future, it was too disconnected from the winter tale we were given. And I find it hard to believe that not one person went out into the outer world to try and figure out what had happened to cause the black out.
So, I think the description was good, but the story was lacking and could have done with a lot of fleshing out.

Travis wrote: "But I actually found Scott to be a compelling and convincing antagonist -- in part because I think real life people similar to him (white nationalists, white survivalists, MAGA types) fashion themselves and even see themselves in very cartoonish ways; and in part because I read him as a stand in for a certain white mindset about land ownership, presumed superiority, and violence."

Yes, I really agree with this.

Allison wrote: "I thought Scott was fine but not used fully. I wanted to see more of the pull, the way that people gravitate towards things that hurt them, how privilege gets scary when questioned and so on."

I agree with this- him not being used fully. I wanted to understand why he was able to stay there and get away with basically anything. I would have appreciated knowing more what was going on behind the scenes with him, how the community's council discussed him, why he was able to assert power over others as the lone outsider, etc.

Totally agree with Travis on using Scott as a stand-in for white mindset about land ownership & presumed superiority. Definitely spot-on there.

Emmett wrote: "Totally agree with Travis on using Scott as a stand-in for white mindset about land ownership & presumed superiority. Definitely spot-on there."

I agree with that as well.

As for why Scott is allowed to stay and do whatever he feels like, I understood that more as Scott taking advantage of the Anishinaabe tradition of not turning away a person in need, then using his unique resources [alcohol and guns] to subvert any attempt of the council to control him.

I guess I did not challenge Scott's story line as strongly as some of you have, possibly because I read Scott's story line is so similar to many other facets of Canadian Indigenous history.

A few outnumbered white people show up with weaponry/items for trade ---> white people disregard any laws or attempts at self determination by the Indigenous culture ---> white people take what they please with no consequences ---> Indigenous peoples suffer greatly

This cycle is seen beyond the European settlement in Canada, but again through the land treaties in the 1800s, the residential school system, the Indian Act, etc.

As I type this out I realize that I am applying a bunch of historical knowledge that is not contained in the story itself to Scott's story line, and I should probably rethink my lack of challenging the way Scott is portrayed in the book.

Any thoughts? Am I way out in left field?

Andrew wrote: "Any thoughts? Am I way out in left field?"

I don't think that is out in left field at all. That makes a lot of sense and is a very smart way to view his character. I drew on a bit of historical knowledge to explain Scott as a villain while reading, but very clearly not as deeply as yourself!

My thinking was more along the lines of... Taking into account the history of white people taking advantage of native peoples and exploiting them, would that not make the Anishinaabe more wary now? Would they not be less likely to tolerate an outsider causing trouble in their community (particularly one who has exhibited openly threatening behavior)?

Speaking on history- I did really like how the author tucked in the history of the Anishinaabe's displacement to the lands they now occupy, with the implication that this is the root cause of their current hardship. I feel it was very nicely done; gently making the connection for the reader.

Nodding along to all of this.

Emmett wrote: "Speaking on history- I did really like how the author tucked in the history of the Anishinaabe's displacement to the lands they now occupy, with the implication that this is the root cause of their current hardship. I feel it was very nicely done; gently making the connection for the reader. ."

Along these lines, it was a bit on the nose, but I really loved how the novel reinterpreted what counts as apocalypse.

No, I think Scott is a perfect stand in for all of that, but he was also sort of the strawman version to me. Which is fine, but given the subtlety of the rest of the novel, the gentle way we examine (or re-examine) relationships and how white conquest altered the history of these people, I was expecting a similar treatment of Scott in the finale. I don't even have a strong feeling on what I'd have preferred-- him turning out to be a sort of wendigo, him being a more human monster who has been going out to the town to kill people and bring them back as food, eating the dead and needing to be exiled, or perhaps scariest, having to live with him because they are in the white man's world and they're forced back into the untenable position of being helpless and also horrified. I didn't receive catharsis and wasn't as horrified because I had been led to believe something more would happen and I didn't.

So it's not his portrayal I find lacking, it's the resolution.

I didn't have the same problems of it reading too mundane and telling too many normal stories at the beginning. I love that slice of life apocalyptic - it reminded me of my favourite during-apocalypse book, Life As We Knew It and also has vibes simialr to When the English Fall (with another insular community dealing with apocalypse).

I can get behind criticism of the villain though.

My main problem was the ending. It wrapped up too quickly, and then the epilogue was too far out. I wanted more ending - another 50 pages and more of their life would have been good. I was left caught a bit short. I guess it is a "promises" thing: this book promised that ongoing slice of life and the struggle while things have gone bad. I don't want it wrapped up all tidy, I want to continue seeing those times.

I found so much of this book to be inert. Even with the world falling apart, there was almost zero sense of rising and falling action, or earned moments. I’m all for subtlety, but whereas I found the direct prose and simplicity of Octavia E. Butler’s post apocalyptic novel Parable of the Sower to be completely compelling throughout, in this case I just felt like the entire narrative was stuck in neutral, with a very occasional tiny ramping up of tension. Disappointing, because I did think Rice had a keen eye for the authentic details of what life is like for this community, and it’s a community whose stories deserve telling.

I am really not in a place to enjoy this book. I'm honestly not sure I'll ever be able to enjoy 'civilization collapses and this is how we survive' kinds of stories. The bit about walking through a picked over grocery store was just a bit too close to home. It's weird because I have previously enjoyed this kind of fiction quite a bit, but I'm not sure when I'll be in a place to enjoy it again.

I think the book was fine technically. The dialogue was a bit clunky in places, but it was fine. It's just I could not deal with the plot at all.

Melani wrote: "I am really not in a place to enjoy this book. ..."

Ha, it's funny but I still love societal collapse books, and actually sought out all the pandemic books I'd had on my list for a while! Maybe an odd reaction, but it worked for me.

Thanks for all the great insights presented here. Some of them helped me to see the villain in a better context.
I agree with Melani, that the grocery store scene hit hard to home. But in consequence I'm with Jessica in still enjoying these kind of books. Especially when they feel so unagitatedly real like here.

Jessica wrote: "My main problem was the ending. It wrapped up too quickly, and then the epilogue was too far out. I wanted more ending - another 50 pages and more of their life would have been good. I was left caught a bit short. I guess it is a "promises" thing: this book promised that ongoing slice of life and the struggle while things have gone bad. I don't want it wrapped up all tidy, I want to continue seeing those times."

I read that Rice is set to write a sequel, set 10 years after the events of this one. I imagine that novel will probably deliver more on the "slice of life" aspect after things have gone bad.

I think the Anishinaabe were in a small ongoing apocalypse before the Big Mysterious technological one. The first half of the book made it clear the culture of the Anishinaabe was in a partial and still early recovery, at least it seemed to me. The Big technological apocalypse appeared to finish off most of the tribe, especially those who had completely lost their internal compasses of who they are and their past. Many of the young adults and teens had no pride left, I think, in their people. Some Anishinaabe were trying to bring back their old spiritual practices and hunting sustenance, but many of the young men were instead losing themselves in video games, alcohol and drugs.

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "I think the Anishinaabe were in a small ongoing apocalypse before the Big Mysterious technological one...."

Yes! I think I mentioned this in the first impressions thread, but I saw the author at an event last year and he said he doesn't view this as an apocalypse book, because the Anishinaabe have already been through the apocalypse - in fact, more than one. I am pairing this discussion with reading 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality and it really hits home at how poorly we in Canada have treated our indigenous peoples (I mean, I knew it already, but this gave further detail).


Emmett wrote: "I read that Rice is set to write a sequel, set 10 years after the events of this one..."

Oh excellent, that's good news.

Super good resource, thanks for that inclusion, Jessica!

A few questions that came to mind for me:

What did you think of the "dreams" and how they were used both within the culture and within the writing?

This is a book about a lot of harsh things. What parts felt hard for you, which ones did you find yourself accepting? Did any of them ring false or resonate with you in a personal way?

The dreams seemed prophetic, but they were actually expressing fears individuals were afraid to say out loud to each other, I thought. Overall, it was a community that seemed to censor conversation.

It was hard to read how those with diabetes died soon after the community lost contact. I hadn't thought about that consequence. Of course that would happen!

Just thinking out loud.... I see two ways for an author to use dreams. Either dreams are some kind of supernatural/magical/religious ability to foresee the future, or dreams are mundane events that might have psychological impact but are not useful guides. With more background on Anishinaabe traditional religion, perhaps Rice could have gone the first route more convincingly. As it is, the dreams in the book are presented as mundane -- "I had a really weird dream last night..." -- yet turn out to be more or less accurate glimpses of the future. It seems like a lost opportunity. Also, the accuracy without any kind of justification felt out of place in a realistic story.

Now that I know that the people valued dreams, it makes me want to go back and look a bit harder at them. But, the author didn't convey how important dreams were to the community. It was always "I had a dream...", but it was never explained that they put much stock in dreams. So, I wish that had been expounded upon a bit more.

Hey everyone! I finally managed to finish one of our group reads in a timely fashion. ;-)

I just finished the book about an hour ago, read the acknowledgements and the other stuff at the back of the book and read all of your comments.

I agree with many of the criticism, but that said, it did not bother me very much. It will just mean that the book may not stay with me for very long. I absolutely loved the setting (it reminded me of growing up in Wisconsin in the 70's and that we had a major power outage in February of 1976 and had no power for 5 days following an ice storm) and the glimpse of the First Nations life on a Reservation. I'm wishing I had listened to it, and may actually listen to a bit on scribd, just for all the Anishinaabemowin words. I tried to look a lot of them up, but many weren't in the Ojibwe-English translator that I used. Dialect, maybe?

I was very surprised to learn that Scott was meant to be a Wendigo, as the author said in the acknowledgements. I wish that had been made more explicit. He wrote that the indications were subtle when he first showed up, but the dream made it obvious. I wish. I didn't know what a wendigo was and looked it up. And this goes along with my biggest problem with the book; that I would've gladly had an extra 50-100 pages in order to fill in some of the blanks, my cultural ignorance, as it were. But then perhaps to First Nations readers it *would* be obvious and to Canadians perhaps a bit more than most non-Natives (although, I could chide myself for not knowing more about Algonquian culture, since there are Ojibwe in Wisconsin), so I'm not sure it is Rice's responsibility. I'm just saying I would not have complained about a bit more cultural background filler.

I find the theory that Scott represents a stereotypical white male survivalist type that still exists today and probably did most of the damage to the First Nations cultures a good one. That was more obvious to me and made me think perhaps he was an amalgamation of those 2 types of monsters.

Also, it had occurred to me, when Evan was talking to Auntie Aileen one visit that their people had already suffered through several apocalypses, that this may have been apocalyptic for more western, technology dependent people, but was actually just a blip with seriously bad timing (the start of winter) for the Anishinaabe. They were on their way to re-establishing their culture/language and letting it flourish. They were poised to weather the return to living off the land and living without modern conveniences quite well. I'm looking forward to the sequel, if it delves into it more deeply. As much as there was real worry as to how they would survive the winter and the anxiety of not knowing what was going on in the "South", I thought there were always small doses of hope and pride that they were relearning their culture and survival mechanisms and that ultimately, they would be ok.

I agree the ending felt rushed, with too much of a gap and then the teasing (using other POV characters), whether Evan had been killed by Scott or not, was something I didn't really appreciate. Relieved that he had survived.

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "It was hard to read how those with diabetes died soon after the community lost contact. I hadn't thought about that consequence. Of course that would happen!"

As someone who lives with Type 1 diabetes ("Juvenile" and insulin dependent), reading these types of books always makes me think about how long I would live if from this moment I couldn't procure any more insulin. Today it would be about 4 months. Every time I get on an airplane, though, I worry about being "Lost". In that case, it would generally be only a few weeks before I ran out of insulin.

Something else occurred to me about the ending: it was one of the white intruders, not one of the members of the community, who shot and killed Scott. Not sure why Rice made that choice.

what struck you about that, Anthony?

It struck me as a bit odd that the community needed outside intervention to rid themselves of the menace, and I’m not sure that’s the story that Rice was wanting to tell. Or was it?

I think perhaps it was a matter of the people being reluctant to kill him and not strong enough to put him out of commission.

I took that as two different ways, one Rice wanting no stain on the Anishinaabe, sort of a white people are the only ones going around killing other people (even though I think one of the college kids killed someone to escape) and two, a possible redemption for white people, i.e. one of them needed to clean up their own mess.

Having Megan be the one to kill Scott made sense to me. She had complained about him to Nicole earlier. He had murdered the leader of her group. It also avoids the idea that "we're all good, they're all evil."

Speaking of the college kid who smashed in that guys face; that shocked me. I felt it wasn’t necessary and needlessly violent. Couldn’t he have hit him anywhere else to put him out of commission?

Laurie wrote: "I viewed the large unknowns as Rice explicitly framing what is and is not important in the story, and perhaps an acknowledgment of how little we know about the thoughts and motivations of people who are so different from ourselves. Evan never presumes to understand the characters who do not share his values, and the story is only peripherally about any of them."

I really like that as well, it felt so realistic - we really don't know other's real motivations and thoughts. While not knowing what happened in the bigger picture was at times frustrating, I found it true and terrifying, because if this were to happen and we lost all communications, we would not know what happened and would have to just carry on and survive.

Three evenings to read. I so love a story that takes my along for a ride like this. It had some shortcomings.

In the no-spoiler area I compared this to Earth Abides. Having finished it now, I felt this even more. Not only does the pacing feel similarly good, but the antagonist, Scott, is similar to the antagonist (Charlie was it?) in Stewart's novel. Both bad guys wander into the community, stir things up, and are then dealt with. The key difference being that Stewart then takes the community through another 60 or so years into the future after the bad guy is handled.

Things I loved: The painting of life in Northern Ontario. The deep character development of the main character, Evan, and his family relationships. The creeping tension of the world grinding to a frozen halt.

Things I didn't like: Lack of *reason* for the apocalypse. Yes, 'The Road' is even more vague, but that is no excuse. I want a REASON why the world ends. Two-dimensionality of the antagonist. Bad guys are better when there is depth to their evil (such as Darth Vader). Plot holes: how does a two-year food supply disappear after 3 months?

I will happily read more by this author, I just hope he keeps growing and make the bad guys more deep and the world and plot slightly more filled out. But the pacing is so so good!

Really good thoughts on the writing choices, Laurie and Nicol!

George, I also wondered about the food cache situation.

George wrote: "In the no-spoiler area I compared this to Earth Abides. Having finished it now, I felt this even more..."
"Things I didn't like: Lack of *reason* for the apocalypse... want a REASON why the world ends."


I agree with the comparison to Earth Abides, as well as to Alas, Babylon vibes (that you had mentioned before). I think it fits in well with those.

At first I was a bit frustrated that we don't know the reason for the apocalyptic scenario, but then I realized it doesn't matter to the characters, so it fit the plot. Maybe still a little frustrating (what happened?) but it worked with what was presented.

Jessica wrote: "At first I was a bit frustrated that we don't know the reason for the apocalyptic scenario"

Ayep, it's really a personal preference thing. I always want to know the why. The more creative the *why* the more the story engages me. As consequence, 'The Road' left me bored, whereas, 'No Blade of Grass' remains one of my all time favorites.