The Snow by Adam Roberts

While I thought Polystom was very good, the brilliance of The Snow came to me as a surprise. All those little details that annoyed me in Polystom - writer's scientific background shining trough, abruptness of the end - this book was just miles better.

The book starts when the world ends. One day the snow starts to fall, and while people are happy in the beginning, the snow doesn't stop, it falls until it lies three miles thick across the whole of the earth. Six billion people die, a few thousand survive eating food "mined" from food stocks below.

I always think it's courageous (or foolhardy) of male writers to write female main characters, since they most of the time don't capture my gender that well. This book's other main character, Tira, is a British woman of Indian descendant. If there is one complain about this book, I'd say that it's the fact that Tira is a woman only by title, but she doesn't actually behave or feel like a woman would. She is a rare survivor though - both in surviving the snow, and then surviving the totalitarian post-snow world where women are desired commodity. That world actually reminded me of another of my favourite boks, Handmaiden's Tale by Margaret Atwood, although this book isn't nearly as extreme.

Book is written as separate surviving documents mostly declared illegal by the Goverment of the People, and it puts together pieces and making sense of a facinating story. Idea is refreshing and original, not something that can be said of many books these days. And I can't really give much higher prase to a book.

I'd say that this book earns the place for Roberts in my essential authors list. Go and read it.

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