This was a disappointment for me. I have generally enjoyed Hutchinson's writing - and the prose in this novel is lyric and beautiful as ever. The plot and characters, however, left a lot to be desired. I need to have someone I feel is worth cheering for, and in this novel I can't find anyone with whom I connect. The endless retribution for acts of violence; the spiraling of conflict into conflict; the sheer bloody-mindedness on both sides - I ended up hoping the entire mess would simply implode.

The 21st century seems to be dominated by unexpected consequences which make things even worse for us. Be it economic depression, western despots and a desire to cut your country off from its largest trade partner the fabric of society has been increasingly worn thin. In this dark and often nasty novel Dave Hutchinson sees the UK struck by a true bolt from the blue fragments of a comet that split up and crashed across the planet. The seas rise, the crops fail; all the lights go out and the governments of the world are soon gone. Flash forward 100 years and your view of the world is probably how far you can get on a horse in a very dangerous world.

The UK is pretty much destroyed in this novel with just a lot of isolated communities living off the land in farms without electricity, access to medicine and increasing illiteracy but compensated the amassment of small arms. People live in communities often walled off and are suspicious of strangers and often their own neighbours. In the small county of the Parish two powerful families have been amassing loyalties from the surrounding areas. But the head of the Taylor clan gets attacked and knocked unconscious and he is found with the body of a young son of the equally powerful Lyall family. As there are no witnesses everyone jumps to conclusions and some long-simmering resentments are ready to boil over.

A little further down south in Guz (previously known as Portsmouth) one of the more organised groups on the coast have been increasingly taking a broader view of the world and its threats. One of which is in that well-known town of bleak despair – Margate. Adam one of their best field agents is sent to investigate and finds cruel enforcers driving people hard to strengthen a despot’s power base. Adam must decide how next to proceed and finds himself straying into the Parish. Soon both conflicts get even hotter.

This often feels like a tale of the American wild west with family feuds, marauding gangs and small communities run by the strength of the gun rather than reason. But the true horror of the story is that this all feels plausible. Here is a society that has lost the gloss of civilisation – libraries used for fuel, death by a cut and high infant mortality. Hutchinson reminds the reader of that phrase that humanity is only a few meals from anarchy. People are paranoid and all are grasping for their own place in the world and the few who appear to want a better world are often punished unwittingly. As the story progresses, we see how this feud wears people’s humanity down and the desire to just kick back and destroy all those you envy or feel slighted by builds and builds. The violence is brutal and unforgiving.

I really liked the concept of the destroyed UK here. Its very hard not to look at this incredibly insular and impoverished country and not think of what most of us are seeing on the news. Its not simply a tale of family feuds. There is an intriguing political dimension with Adam and the powers in Guz investigating their potential rivals. Adam is the most interesting character on the group a desire to help communities; a sense of justice but at the same time trained to kill and maim to a level that many in these small towns and villages will be stunned by. He starts off wanting to help but the stupidity of the locals ends up unleashing his own sense of retribution.

If you enjoy the quiet apocalypse stories of John Wyndham, you’ll find this a very enjoyable tale. The destruction by the comet is fascinating but it’s the consequences of such an event on society where the true horror lies. You may find yourself looking at your neighbours and friends around the street and wondering what would happen if the lights went out forever…

https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2019/2/5/shelter-by-dave-hutchinson

Thank you to netgalley I received this as an ARC. I enjoyed it very much was good solid read. Solid 3.75 Stars for me!

The writing in Shelter is what I'd describe as workaday but it was engaging and eminently readable. The premise (survival in a post-apoc world), while currently very much in vogue and therefore in danger of being done to death, is interesting and well thought out. The pace was a pretty rapid trundle - so much so that at times the wheels did threaten to come off. The whole thing is unashamedly plot driven, however I felt that the actual plot development didn't quite keep up with the action at times and meant certain scenes seemed superfluous. I have to admit it wasn't my cup of tea really but it certainly kept me entertained. I probably won't seek out the sequels though due to a few things that put me off. Firstly the amount of killings. I was amazed there was anyone left alive to continue the story! I found it hard to care about or become emotionally invested in a character when life seemed so cheap and it appeared everyone was going to die anyway! Also it meant that the deaths of major characters were lessened in impact. Secondly, I really disliked the way the Adam Hardy character went from a fairly moral spy to a ruthless murdering psychopath over night! This really ruined this character for me. I also thought the ending was a little weak. It was a obvious sequel set-up but gave the readers of this book very little reward or pay off. A decent example of its kind, Shelter just wasn't the book for me.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley. That being said I had a hard time getting into this story. Initially the storyline was what attracted me as I love anything post-apocalyptic. But very quickly I found the story became convoluted with too many characters getting involved without much background information so I quickly lost track of who was who in the book. I think if the story had focused more on a central plot and and not gone off on so many tangents it would have helped me to become more invested in the characters. It does appear that there will be another book in the series but I'm not sure if I'll be reading it or not.

I enjoyed this one a lot. It's set in southern England several generations after an apocalypse bought about by an asteroid strike. The picture of a society slowly putting itself back together with quasi-medieval subsistence farming communities strongly reminded me of Richard Cowper's excellent Corlay books. But it's not all some bucolic idyll. A chance meeting and brief scuffle have terrible consequences, as a whole region is dragged into conflict between two families. The resulting downward spiral into violence is expertly plotted. Nobody wants it, but nobody is able to stop it.
Throw a spy, an emerging serial killer and a would be despot into the mix, and it's clear it's not going to end well.
It's all very good fun, exciting, and somehow very English - it put me in mind of a John Wyndham novel, although it is substantially less cosy than his middle class catastrophes.. There are further books to come in this setting, written by other authors, and this has more than whetted my appetite for them. Also, a special appreciation for making my hometown of Plymouth the centre of rebuilding civilisation, although I am not convinced janners are the best candidates for that job....we can but hope Cap'n Jaspers and Ivor Dewdney's survived the apocalypse.

A darkly compelling dystopian tale of post-apocalyptic England

One hundred years ago, a series of meteors known as The Sisters struck Earth, causing an ecological disaster that led to a century of rain, flooding, hail and blizzards known as the Long Autumn. Tsunamis devastated vast tracts of land, whole cities and towns were erased, and entire populations died of starvation and disease.

As the story begins, society is slowly beginning to emerge from the aftermath. Modern technology, industrialisation and infrastructure are all but gone. In what remains of England, life is hard, lawlessness abounds, travel is difficult, and survivors of the disaster are huddled in isolated areas, fortified farms and small communities, struggling to survive. The weather is improving slightly, and things are beginning to change. People are organising and banding together. Families lead their compounds, each with their loyal bands of farmers and followers. Tensions are sparked and retaliatory attacks soon escalate into full-scale war between factions. Caught up in the erupting violence, a poverty-stricken farmer is ground down by hardship and humiliation to horrifying results.

In Guz (Plymouth), which was spared the worst of the cataclysm, a government-of-sorts has been set up and is sending scouts and spies to the far corners of England and Wales on recon missions to assess the situation. One of these spies is sent to the east of England to track down a colleague who has gone missing in Thanet. There he discovers a tyrannical warlord ruling his community with an iron fist, treating his fiefdom as a work camp, and plotting an expansion of his authoritarian domain.

The plot’s strands are skilfully developed and woven together, creating a riveting and realistic post-apocalyptic world which thrills and shocks in equal measure. Reminiscent at times of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in its powerful depiction of humanity’s heart of darkness, the book also provides the reader with occasional glimmers of hope: small acts of kindness, compassion, regret, and hints of the rebuilding of civilisation amidst the horror. The characters are sufficiently complex and well-drawn to render them believable as people living through a grim and dangerous dark age. Vivid descriptions of the harsh, rain-swept, water-logged landscape lend an unsparing dimension to the novel’s sombre atmosphere.

While it may be too bleak for some, Shelter: Tales of the Aftermath is a gripping read and an excellent first novel in a planned series that leaves the reader wanting more.

Arwen Evenstar

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

I really enjoyed this one, but then I enjoy all books,Give, it a try you might enjoy this book too, it's free and you have nothing to lose

Shelter: Tales Of The Aftermath by Dave Hutchinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm of two minds on this one.

I feel like I ought to go easy on it because it is, after all, just a recreation of the Hatfields and McCoys set in rural post-apocalyptic England. It's been many years after a broken asteroid took out North America and we have a mostly illiterate farming community that is run more like a feudal system than anything else.

Enter in the characters. This is where all the fun is going to be had, assuming you have fun with them. Me? I was kinda meh with them and the underlying concept of the novel. It was competent but nothing truly stood out. I've enjoyed Hutchinson's other novels quite a bit but this one kinda left me flat.

You know it's a bad sign when you're rooting for the bloodshed and a nightmare-fueled war between these "sane" rural community folk.

Then again, maybe that was the whole point. I'll be looking out for other novels by him but this one... not so much.

The Long Autumn is coming to an end. For almost a century after the coming of The Sisters, the surviving peoples of rainswept England have huddled in small communities and on isolated farms, scavenging the remains of the old society. But now society, of a kind, is starting to rebuild itself. In Kent, a brutal tyranny is starting to look West. In the Cotswolds, something terrible and only vaguely-glimpsed is happening. And in a little corner of Berkshire two families are at war with each other. After decades of simply trying to survive, the battle to inherit this brutal new world is beginning.

A couple of years ago I picked up Europe in Autumn on a whim. I was travelling and needed something to divert my attention while on a flight (don’t get me started on how much I loathe flying). In the departure lounge I purchased the novel with absolutely no expectations. Something about the blurb captured my attention, but I had never heard of the author and had no idea what was in store. A couple of hours later the plane landed and I don’t think I had blinked during the entire flight. Dave Hutchison’s Fractured Europe novels are, to my mind, some of the best near-future thrillers that have been published over the last couple of years. When I heard he was writing a new novel, and it was in my favourite sub-genre, I had to admit I too being more than a little excited.

The premise of Shelter is relatively simple. Two comets, known as The Sisters, have collided with Earth and caused all manner of environmental disasters. This in turn has caused a cataclysmic breakdown in society. Decades of unpredictable weather conditions have left parts of Britain underwater and the population have fragmented into many different factions.

The main plot can probably best be described as the Hatfields and the McCoys in the post-apocalyptic south of England. Two extended families who have learned to survive on their own are pitted against one another due to unfortunate circumstance. Watching a peaceful community implode is completely fascinating. The range war between the Taylors and the Lyalls starts small, but quickly intensifies. Each violent act elicits equally violent retribution. The families are hell bent on keeping hold of what little they have, neither group ever stopping to consider the wider ramifications of what they are doing.

There is little denying that Hutchison’s vision of Britain is bleak, but it is also utterly engrossing. I suspect the main reason is because it feels so believable. The actions and reactions of the characters never feel anything other than genuine. As friends and neighbours are drawn into the violence it becomes increasingly evident of how unimportant anything other than survival has become. Simple misunderstandings make the situation even worse and events build towards a final showdown.

Along with story of the two families, there is also a thread of the narrative that follows a man named Adam. An undercover military operative from another part of the country, he travels around the south of England watching communities and reports back to his superiors. Under strict orders to not become involved, Adam moves around checking on groups and learning who is controlling what resources. His reports are used to decide if a society should be viewed as the potential threat or not. When he finds himself in the midst of the conflict between the Taylors and the Lyalls, he realises he can no longer sit idly by and watch all the needless death. He is compelled to break with protocol, intervene and take action.

It may sound quite downbeat, but there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Communities are beginning to trade with one another and travel is getting just a little easier. Britain is being reborn, but this is going to be a most difficult birth. There are many different groups who all have their own take on what form this new society could be. Some want to be left alone to go their own way. Others are keen on re-establishing the historical status quo, while others want to take all they can get their grubby mitts on. Needless to say, all these competing ideologies guarantee that there will be more conflict to come.

By the novel’s end much has happened, but I still got the distinct impression that we had barely scratched the surface. The most pressing question, what is going on in the rest of the UK, and by extension, the rest of the world? I do hope we get to find out. I’ll happily admit to being a huge fan of Dave Hutchison’s writing in this novel is as good as any of his earlier work. If you haven’t read anything by him before, I would strongly urge you to check this out. Shelter is the ideal place to start.

My musical recommendation for Shelter needed a suitably apocalyptic tone and I think the soundtrack to the 2015 movie version of Z for Zachariah by Heather McIntosh is an ideal choice. Classical music can often be highly emotive, and this is no exception. This soundtrack manages to be many things. Tense, thrilling and yet also fragile and sometimes hopeful. I certainly think it perfectly partners Shelter. I would suggest pairing one with the other and see what you think.

Shelter is published by Solaris and is available from June 14th. A second novel set during The Aftermath, Haven by Adam Roberts, is set to follow later in the year. Solaris are great at bringing us shared universe novels. I’ll definitely be checking Haven out. Knowing me, I expect there will probably be a review at some point as well.

Shelter by Dave Hutchinson

It’s almost a hundred years since the Sisters, a fragmentary asteroid, hit Earth. Much of the planet was overwhelmed. Those who survived the initial impacts, with their floods and fires, then had to endure the Long Autumn, a time of famine and starvation, brutality and cruelty. Finally, it’s drawing to an end. Earth is beginning to recover. But everything that was once taken for granted is gone. The past is now something to be scavenged.

At last the rains that have deluged southern England are beginning to dry. But most people haven’t been further than a day’s horse ride in their entire lives. Rumours, though, are moving between the communities of isolated farmers and small towns. Oxford, for example, is a no-go area, although nobody is really sure why. There’s a foreign fleet moored off the coast but nobody knows why it’s there, and there are boats moving silently through the flooded Somerset Levels. West and East are no longer connected by land. There is talk of a tyranny in Kent that is drawing people to it. Elsewhere, it’s the daily struggle for survival that consumes the mind.

Shelter by Dave Hutchinson, the author of the compelling near-future Europe novels, is the first of the shared universe Tales of the Aftermath series which will be continued by Adam Roberts later this year. Dave Hutchinson is such a fine writer. His prose is bleakly beautiful and his characters carry their doom within their souls. In Shelter, Dave Hutchinson continues what he does so well.

The setting of Berkshire and Oxfordshire during the apocalyptic aftermath is painted brilliantly. This is my neck of the woods and I loved to see it portrayed in such unusual style. It made me take another look at the world around me and imagine it all ravaged. This feels real. It’s frightening, alien and terrifyingly possible. This book frightened me.

The characters have so much to suffer through. Shelter isn’t an easy book to read, at least for me, largely because its people have had to compromise to survive to such an extent that possibilities of a future hope now seem destroyed. We meet quite a large group of characters scattered across this region. Time is needed to get to know them all as we move from one community to another and discover the harsh reality of each. At times we might feel liking for one or other of them and then that empathy is smashed on the rocks. There are moments here that shocked me, one in particular, so much so that I had to put the book down for a day or two.

While I admire so much the vision and prose of Shelter, and relish its Oxfordshire and Berkshire setting, I found the novel too grim for me. The behaviour of most of these people is so ugly. The Long Autumn has robbed them of their humanity. Perhaps there is hope now that the weather is settling and the past is beginning to be forgotten but for many salvation is an unimaginable dream. So while I appreciated elements of Shelter, not least its power and bleak beauty, I found it hard to read. But, if you enjoy a compelling apocalyptic tale and can cope with characters who appear to have no mercy left in them, then I think Shelter could be for you. Dave Hutchinson continues to be one of the most exciting and soulful writers of contemporary science fiction.

Other review
Acadie

I've always been fascinated by the period in British history that used to be known as the Dark Ages. That name is used less now as it's been accepted that chaos didn't descend when Roman rule ended. Nevertheless there were huge changes - the loss of manufactured goods, of widespread trade and of currency.

Set a hundred or so years after the destruction of modern civilisation by an asteroid strike known as "The Sisters", Hutchinson's new book takes a look at what one might term a modern "Dark Ages". As in the 5th century, we see here little bands of survivors eking a living among the ruins, keeping farming going but with no modern manufacturing. Here, as then, there are surviving patches of control and order where military formations survived, and others where local strong men establish little kingdoms.

It was the age of Arthur...

...it is the age of Adam.

Adam is - what? A spy? An explorer? - for Guz, the realm, polity, city-state, call it what you will, that emerged from Portsmouth naval base. In this book he's sent on a mission across country to investigate a rather nasty warlord who has established himself in Kent. Adam is a resourceful sort, self reliant, careful, tough, and me makes a good viewpoint character as we see what our world has become, six or seven generations on.

Hutchinson is good at letting his story unspool, showing us the territories Adam is going through and the character of their residents. As well as Kent there's an agricultural enclave on the Berkshire/ Oxfordshire border (there's some kind of trouble further north in Oxford and the Cotswolds, we never find out exactly what) where much of this story takes place. It's not, though, an idyllic, Hobbiton sort of place. Rather, The Parish is rent by jealousies and grudges and ready to erupt in civil war. Inevitably Adam becomes involved in this but I won't say any more about the detail because that would give away rather too much.

This part of the story shows off rather effectively, I think, the "nasty, brutish and short" lifestyle which we all fear will befall us should civilisation stutter. The way Hutchinson chooses to animate the conflict here almost made me gasp - he's certainly not sentimental about his characters, and what happens shows, perhaps, that the term "Dark ages" really does describe this world.

If that's the bad news, the good is that there will be more books set in this universe - the next, Haven by Adam Roberts, is due in August. Hutchinson and Roberts are clearly having fun - as well as an Adam in this book the second has a "Forktongue Davy". Roberts, of course, has form in depicting apocalyptic, futuristic versions of Berkshire (see for example his New Model Army) and Hutchinson's Fractured Europe sequence (I think it's now a five book trilogy) shows a continent divided into petty states and autonamous holdings, so together they seem almost destined to produce something like this.

Very thriller-y, very violent, pretty dark and with hints of wider developments - whether it's the inherited nukes of Guz, the strange "Spanish fleet" moored off the coast or those mysterious goings-on to the north - I sense a lot more to come fro this world, and I'm looking forward to that (not least because I think I live in the path of one of these roving war bands and I need to know what's going on!)

3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Sisters were two asteroids that struck the earth and almost annihilated the entire world. For almost a century storms ravaged the earth, making survival barely possible. In England pockets of survivors eek out a living in small communities. Most modern technology has not survived and the remnants of resources that remained after the asteroid strike are nearly gone. As civilization tries to rebuild, different tyrants emerge and cause chaos. In a small area of the country two strong families are at war and hundreds of people die in the ensuing battles.

This is book one of a series. The world building is pretty good. While the book was well written and there was plenty of action, I still found myself waiting and waiting to figure out what the point of the story was. It just seemed to meander and lacked focus. I guess I just like my fantasy a bit more direct than speculative. The book is interesting, however, and I recommend you read it.

This book was well written and very fun to read. The characters were great and I enjoyed the world building. The author does a great job at introducing the characters and moving the plot along. There were a few things that I didn't like, but it wasn't enough to really sway me one way or the other. It's definitely a story that I can get lost in and both feel for the characters. It is definitely a go-to novel that I highly recommend to anyone who loves a great read. Definitely a highly recommended read that I think everyone will enjoy.

This was a different take on post-apocalyptic fiction. There is nothing in the book about the actual apocalypse, instead it picks up 80 years or so after it. It's based in the small towns of England and covers efforts to start rebuilding.

Set sometime in the future following an asteroid strike civilization is starting to evolve. In The Parish there are large farms each supporting several families. This is a simple barter system. However, life is not so relaxed elsewhere - is there unrest in the Cotswolds? Is the fortified city state of Guz (aka Plymouth) seeking to take over other areas and what is going on in Margate?

As post-apocalyptic books go this is comparitively simple. The earth was struck by "The Sisters" which were twin asteroids. Flooding ensued as did "The Long Autumn" with far too much rain. Even over a century later isolated communities did not always know what caused the apocalypse - I was particularly pleased to see this as I have wondered in other books how everyone knew what happened once mass communications went down! There isn't a zombie in sight nor a particularly nasty virus wiping out mankind. Don't get me wrong I love a good zombie or deadly virus book but this made a pleasant change.

The world that the author has created worked for me. There was structure in places. In some places there was dictatorship and in others, such as The Parish, it was a seemlingly gentle community. I enjoyed the fact that the author showed us different ways of living which were dependent on many things such as the people in power, the situation when the asteroids hit and the geography of the country.

There are several main characters but the character of Adam Hardy brings all the threads together in the end. He seems a strong, fair character though he has a little wobble in the middle which I wasn't so sure of. There are main characters in all of the places we visit who all have clearly defined characters - all so different. I was also pleased to see some strong women.

I really enjoyed this book. The world that the author has created worked for me & there is a strong plot which pulled everything together well. There is a lot of violence in this book - not all of which I felt was strictly necessary. I think the author got a little carried away in places! However despite this I enjoyed it so much that I couldn't bring myself to demote it to 4 stars!

I see that there is a series planned and I shall be purposely looking out for the next book.

I received a free copy via Netgalley.

Thank you so much @netgalley & Rebellion for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I LOVED THIS BOOK. I came very late to the fantasy genre. It was only two years before Series One GoT that I read Songs of Fire & Ice and fell instantly and utterly in love. Since then I've devoured series after series, author after author even taken on Robert Jordan's epic. So I know a thing or two about the fantasy & sci-fi genres.

Dave Hutchinson is a veteran author and unbelievably not one I'd come across before but everything about the blurb, cover and the author's list of work intrigued me. 'Shelter' is set in the future after The Sisters (pieces of a comet) had brought a Long Autumn to Earth and a virtual blackout of communications. Although the world looks similar it's sophisticated conventions are long gone.

People live in communities cut off from each other, some thriving, others starving with enough marauders, madmen & power hungry despots trying to carve themselves kingdoms out of humanity & earth.

There is a very real sense of paranoia and distrust, that things are held together by the barest thread of civility and how very bloody things become when boundaries deteriorate.

The author is so skillful with characterizations that even if I had a negative response to a character - I still felt for them and I was intrigued to know how their stories ended.

The simplicity of transplanting what human beings know into a different yet familiar setting really plays with the reader's mind. I only have one word of advice to give the author. Stop basking on your laurels and the write second one, please. Fantastic piece of dystopian fiction!

I requested this title for review because (1) Hutchinson wrote the EUROPE IN AUTUMN series that I enjoyed, and (2) Adam Roberts is writing the second book in this series and he's a personal favorite. I don't know how many books are planned in the series, who the other authors might be, or if their plots will be sequential. This one is set about 100 years after numerous large comet fragments struck the Earth and it follows a number of families and small communities in rural England as they cope with the primitive conditions that ensued. One of my tests for a science fiction book like this is whether the story would still be science fiction without the primary plot device. In this case the answer is "no". The comet is a MacGuffin and without it the story could be set 200 years ago in the Western U.S. and would serve as a tale of struggles on the frontier. If that appeals to you, you may want to check it out and see how it works in an English setting.

Call me morbid but I do love a good mass extinction event. On paper, that is. Watching the characters scrabble about trying to understand, to regroup, to exist. Be it zombies, plague or entities from outer space, I’m signed up for the ride. You’ve only to read / watch Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead or Stephen King’s The Stand to observe how man can return to his baser instincts when the chips are down.

Into the field comes Dave Hutchinson’s Shelter – Aftermath, the first of a new series from Solaris. My interest is piqued by the setting – we’re not present on the day, week, month or even year of the cataclysmic events that caused the end of the world as we know it – we’re a century or so down the line. And we are in Little England. A Little England armed with pitchforks, guns and suspicion. Actually, we’re not even in the whole of England – we’re looking at the fractured south through our anthropologic microscope. No one knows what’s happening in the wilds of my dear old north.

First came The Sisters – broken up asteroid strikes that trashed the earth, burnt and scorched it into ruin and then destroyed the eco-system as we know it. Weather erupted that destroyed our green and pleasant backwaters. We then drop in a century later to observe the devolution of man from what had gone before. Limited technology. No factories. Suspicion and clusters of half starved humanity who don’t know what – or who – may be living over the next hill. Feudal communities in various stage of expansion and implosion. And did I mention guns? Lots of guns – which I will admit felt odd to this Little Englander used to a society in which they are mostly prohibited.

We see three communities dealing with their own issues – Guz, a former naval base that has weathered The Sisters fairly well and is eying neighbouring country for both intelligence and possible expansion while placing quotas on the intake of said neighbours even when they are starving (sound familiar?). There’s Thanet, in Berkshire, where feudalism and back breaking farm work are alive and well and the local populace appear largely content with their lot. And the third – a dictatorship run by Frank Pendennis that is being observed for Guz by spy Adam whose travels pull the threads of these individually myopic southern communities into a more rounded sense of place and time. Oh, and then there’s Morty. Not Monty. Morty. You’ll have to read the book to find out about him though I will tease and say he’s kind of a post-apocalyptic Trash-Can Man without the nuclear resources.

Hutchinson crafts this story with great skill, highlighting how one small act can cause a catastrophic ripple effect that no one perhaps wants but that becomes impossible to stop. He observes the little details of humanity beautifully – those chinks and flaws that begin to crumble under the weight of hardship and loss. And he writes funny, pithy interactions with a generous helping of anglo-saxon to leave us in little doubt of where our characters stand.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Aftermath and I note from the blurb at the back that it is paired with a future book release due in August 2018 from Solaris – Haven by Adam Roberts. . There are plot breadcrumbs laid throughout Aftermath that seem to lead us to the north of England. I can’t wait to get my grubby little hands on this and see what is happening in my neck of the woods in parallel with Hutchinson’s tale.

With great thanks to NetGalley, Rebellion Publishing, Solaris and Dave Hutchinson for the advanced copy for review. This review is entirely my own opinion.

I love the post-apocalyptic genre when done well. Shelter is a good read with a couple of minor problems. Usually the end is related to disease, war, aliens, or the like. This world ending event was caused by the break up and impact of a comet, the pieces being called The Sisters. Shelter takes place in southern England generations after the impact. The characters are well developed but there were times when it was difficult to know who was doing what to who. This book was written by an British author for a British audience so those who are not familiar with the geography of England could be lost when the author writes about different locations. My major issue was with the foul language used. Yes, this was a rough society but using every expletive ever invented multiple times on each page seems to be gratuitous. Very interesting story line but would be much better if cleaned up.