I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic novels and THE RENDING AND THE NEST is a good one. One welcome surprise is that it is free of all of those pesky tropes that this genre seems to peddle fairly often! It is also so much more than just a chilling dystopian story, it looks at deeper topics such as motherhood and faith, and asks the questions - How well do we know the people we love? What sustains us in the midst of suffering? How do we forgive the brokenness we find within others--and within ourselves?

The world is an intriguingly bizarre one but the worldbuilding is done excellently. Schwehn clearly has a vivid imagination, women giving birth to inanimate objects is a new one on me! This is a very character driven novel and the author is adept at maintaining their development. I was rather shocked about two things - one, that this is a debut and secondly, that I cared so much for the characters and what became of them. It is entertaining throughout and you race to the end in order to find out what happens, and more importantly, what it all means.

There are a couple of issues that I can't overlook, unfortunately. Although the overall premise is amazing, I did feel that there was a lack of information surrounding some of the story, I am someone who likes a bit of background, background that was lacking in a few places here. I did also question whether it was getting too weird for me but then decided that there was no such thing as too weird! I was thinking about this book for a long time after I had finished so perhaps the creepy, bizarre elements were a stroke of genius! After all, the mark of a good book is if you remember it, I know I will remember this one!

I feel my time was invested well reading this title and I look forward to reading further publications from Schwehn in the future. Certainly an author to watch!

I would like to thank Kaethe Schwehn, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Rending and the Nest is a post-apocalyptic novel, like many books that I've read, but it's utterly unlike most other books I've read in that genre. The Rending, which has disappeared 95% of the world's population, has left the world grey and capable of producing only a small number of fruits and vegetables. Most of the animals have disappeared too, and it no longer rains in the way that it does now. No-one in Mira's community, or indeed any of the other communities where they spend time, knows what happened. Indeed, one of the activities at the regular meetings in Zion is to exchange theories about what happened, or why they survived, or why the world is now in it's current state.

There is a chilling and constant sense of foreboding throughout the book, which is emphasised by Schwehn's description of the climate of the post-Rending world, and the Piles - stacks of random items, the purpose of which no-one has yet established. The Piles are an inspired element of the story. They provide a setting for conversations to take place, a source of objects that bring up issues within Zion, and somewhere for Mira to gain a little perspective and a little control.

The main storyline moves along at a good pace, interspersed with short sections about the pre-Rending world and what various characters were doing when the Rending happened. Although we know almost nothing about why the Rending happened, I found that I was okay with that, which is unusual for me. The snippets of life before the Rending provide good background for the characters, but the world after the Rending is so realistic that I was completely focused on that side of the story, and not how they'd ended up there. Schwehn has a brilliant balance of the larger story with the everyday minutiae of how the inhabitants of Zion survives in a world that gives them very little to work with.

The storyline around the pregnancies and the inanimate objects the women give birth to is wonderfully creepy, and the way that the inhabitants of Zion deal with it is both heart-wrenching and somewhat off-putting. It provides a very humanising element to the book, even with the strangeness of the objects that are birthed, and I'm so impressed with how Schwehn incorporated this plotline into the overall story.

The Rending and the Nest is a post-apocalyptic story which feels truly, truly apocalyptic and so original. I enjoyed it hugely, and would recommend it to anyone who wants a post-apocalyptic tale outside the ordinary, and which isn't afraid to take on unusual topics.

This starts as quite a classic dystopian novel and then around 20% in, all of the rules are thrown out of the window. I love dystopian novels and have widely within the genre, but this became a book like no other.

I don't want to risk leaving any spoilers, but it's definitely worth the investment of reading. Aside from the dystopian angle, it explores deep female friendship beautifully and deftly navigates the landscape of need versus desire. And it's trope-free!

One of the best dystopian novels I have read in a while! Would recommend this to readers who loved Station Eleven - the two books are similar in that they both depict a post-apocalyptic world, but their major strength is their characters and how the authors handle emotion. I was amazed how much this story made me care about the fate of inanimate objects and I thought the author's linking of the "Babies" with their mothers' pasts was really clever. Can't wait to read more from Kaethe Schwehn.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world we follow the story of Mia and other residents of a community called Zion. 95% of the world's population has disappeared in an event called the Rending. We are several years after this event and most people appear to have settled into communities although there are still some travellers including Michael who arrives at Zion one day. Following the Rending there had been no babies born. However, now the women in Zion start to fall pregnant and give birth to objects rather than babies.

I read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction so can handle being dropped into a world after some sort of event. Usually it is explained - a virus, a war, a natural disaster or similar. All we know about this is that people disappeared. All at the same time leaving only around 5% of the world's population - though I did wonder how the people in Zion knew this quite so specifically - how did they know that it had happened all over the world? So on the book goes taking approximately the first third to tell us very little about the event, nothing about the immediate aftermath effect on the world & introducing the characters. A slow start especially as the characters are not particularly three dimensional.

Then the book gets just plain.........weird. There really isn't another word for it. The women of Zion are falling pregnant and having babies. When the blurb said they were giving birth to inanimate objects I presumed some sort of mutation or new virus which had turned the babies into fosillied human matter or similar. What I actually got was people giving birth to actual items - the first birth was to a plastic doll. Okay - strange. I am sure there is a reasonable explanation. There wasn't. Women then gave birth to ornamental wire birds, a honey bear, vase and - beyond comprehension - a pair of chopsticks. What? Really? At this point I had decided that that this was either an allegory and I was missing the point or a spoof book poking fun at post-apocalyptic fiction. Having completed the book I presume it was the former but I still don't get it! From what I gather from the story and the book write ups this is something to do with discovering yourself amongst other questions. Sorry but the point has totally passed me by.

The book continues with a story about Michael who lures Zionite Lana away to be an exhibit at his human zoo. This was actually quite a reasonable section of the book as I could believe the concept of a human zoo. What I couldn't deal with was Michael wanting the "babies" of Zion and the lengths they took to keep these inanimate objects from him.

Leaving aside the whole weirdness of the babies, this is a basically mediocre book. The characters are not particularly well constructed and the plot has more holes than a colander.

I am not well versed on philosophy. I read my books primarily for entertainment. I am quite happy to learn from fiction and frequently have cause to stop and think about what is being said in stories. However, this was just a step too far. Understanding what a character's life is saying to you in a book is fine but understanding women giving birth to chopsticks was just beyond me.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley

I received a copy of this book for an honest review from netgalley.

This was a book I was 50/50 about before I even started reading it and I’m afraid for me it fell a bit flat.

The book started at a ridiculous fast pace which left me trying to catch up for the rest of the read. The characters did nothing for me and I didn’t experience an emotional connection with any of them.

The only thing I liked was that the author made a truely original dystopian novel, which I think is a rarity nowadays. However, for me it just went a bit too wierd.

Unfortunately this book was not for me, and I think the claimed similarity to Station Eleven is a false one.
I just couldn't get into the story. Even in a sci fi, dystopian world, the set up needs to make sense with its reasons why things are this way. In this book, we just need to accept everything as is and move on. But, in this way it's very hard to get into the story and engage properly. That's why I couldn't get into the book and continue. I didn't finish it after 25%. There's a good idea, but execution was poor, and the plot was not woven well enough. Maybe there's more further, but I just couldn't get past the 'no proper set up' factor.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this book in NetGalley after reading it's for likes of Emily St john Mandel's Station Eleven. First of all, I must say the only similarity between this book and Station Eleven is 95% of world's population disappearing. Nothing else. The writing, the structure, the style is completely different. There is no explanation or hint of why people vanished. We just accept then and move on in the story.
The first thing I disliked in this book is that there is almost no introduction to the story. It starts immediately, it was like trying to hold a hot pot with no handles, full of food. I found no handles to engage me with the story and pushed myself to continue reading. The other reviewers are saying there is much philosophy, thought provoking elements but probably later in the book but I didn't finish this after 30%.
I think there is a promising idea here but I'd expected it'll be implemented a bit more sophisticated.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This was one of the most bizarre books I've read.

Mia is living in a post apocalyptic world. Six years ago, people started to vanish leaving nothing behind. After the Rending, Mia tries to lead a normal life - scavenging and surviving in a makeshift community. But that all changes when the women who remain start giving birth to strange things, and Mia must decide if she must fight for her normal life, and that of her unborn child, against the mysterious Michael.

The story itself is frenetic and confusing. The action starts right away, and I felt as though I was constantly trying to catch up and organise what was happening in my head. Unfortunately I also didn't really feel any emotional connection to the characters, perhaps because of this confusion, but also because I felt that there's no real depth there, and none of the relationships are explored past a certain point. I thought the world building was also a little lacking. There's no explanation as to why the world is how it is or where everyone has gone. Although this does lend the novel a mysterious overtone, it also added to my confusion.

The most bizarre aspect of the story is when the women start giving birth to inanimate objects. I just...didn't get it at all. I think it was just a little too weird for me. I applaud the author for going completely off course on this though. It's imaginative and inventive which can be difficult to do in apocalyptic novels where it seems everything is overdone.

I love vague, quiet, introspective dystopian stories; the premise of this intrigued me to no end and I was hoping for something incredible. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely enjoyed this; just not as much as I thought I would.

I loved the vagueness of the world building. All the reader knows is that six years prior to the events of this book, most people and most things vanished without a trace. What is left of the things is mostly in random piles, while those who are left of the people have to try to make sense of the changed world. These exploration of what makes us human is exacerbated when women start to fall pregnant and then giving birth to objects rather than babies. I adore the setting and I love that Schwehn left the how unexplained. I am not interested in the mechanics of apocalypse but rather in the human condition as influenced by it. But, and this is my main problem with this book, the characters were not all that well explored.

The story is told in first person perspective by Mira who was 18 when the Rending (this is what her group of people started calling the apocalyptic event) happened and she lost her whole family. She is supposedly plagued by the guilt of losing her brother but this never really felt the case as she kept forgetting him the moment something happened. Her relationship to Lana and Rodney is at the core of this book, especially her friendship with the former. But again we are told of her friendship rather than it being shown. This lack of an emotional core made it difficult for me to connect with her. Parts of this is very much on purpose I am sure: Mira is blunted by the Rending, this new world does not offer anything in way of comfort and as such this could have worked brilliantly if it had been explored more. As it is, I cannot help but wonder if I would have liked the book better had the protagonist been older. Now her narration felt superficial and left me feeling at a distance.

The timeless manner in which the story is told (I was unsure for a while when the Rending had occured and had just settled on the nineties when Mira starts talking about smart phones) worked both for and against my enjoyment of the story. I liked how it underscored the parable like story and how it made the story both personal and universal. But at the same time it further led to the protagonist being ill-defined. Her pop culture references were dated without there being an in-story reason for that.

So overall, I loved the worldbuilding and the premise and the language of parable, while the characters and their relationships did not quite work for me.

3.5 Stars.

I've read this book a week ago and I am still thinking about it. What a read! Throughout, I kept wondering: do I like this? Is this too weird? Is this brilliant? Or not?

I still haven't found the answer to most of these questions. What I can say is, I did enjoy the read and I read it in one sitting. The pacing is great (if you enjoy character driven stories), the world engrossing, and the characters are well developed.

I really connected with the main character and Mira is the main reason this book kept my attention. I liked reading about her experiences and her life in this weird new world.

But...the story is just so bizarre and absurd. Women give birth to inanimate objects, like vases, dolls and decorative birds. Kaethe Schwehn writes a lot of poetry, and I feel like this book is more a metaphor than a coherent story. The writing itself is also very poetic, which I liked but might put a few people off.

The plot takes a while to get going. The antagonist does not show up until almost halfway through the book, which might ruin the pacing for readers who don't enjoy the main character as much, and ultimately I do think it was a tad too weird for me.

There is no explanation given to the reader about the state of the world. Why has everyone disappeared? Where did they go? But that is okay, at no point did I feel like we're missing out by not getting an explanation or that an explanation would make the book better.

If you liked Station Eleven, enjoy slow burning books and find the premise of The Rending and the Nest interesting, give it a shot.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I'd hoped, but part of that is my own fault. I've never really liked stories that drop the reader straight in the middle of the action; I always feel like I'm scrambling to catch up, and I have no sense of who the characters were Before whatever's happened. I know some people like that kind of story, though.

It's an intriguing premise, but I never really felt like I had all the information. For example, what were the ghost fruits? They're peach coloured, until they aren't, and they make jam? If there was more information than that I missed it. The whole world of the novel felt like that, half built and tidbits of information. I know that part of the reason was because we're firmly in Mira's POV the whole time, but I still feel it could have been better done.

It is a completely unique premise, though, and I enjoyed the story very much.


Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.