“Ma certainly has the chops to find that space of–eh, we’ll call it “truth”–but she instead . . . runs away.”

Ma’s book has everything going for it, including the talent of a writer who weaves subtler allegories beneath the heavier apocalyptic themes.

The narrative demands, of course, that we ask the difference between a world of drone workers and drone zombies, between misogynistic men before or after the end of the world, between alienation from one’s native culture and from a micro-culture (or the absence of any). All of this is beautifully unfolded across the book’s first 2/3 with a protagonist–herself understandably out of balance–who nonetheless lives with an expectation for reason and compassion.

Her resolve to discipline and responsibility to others becomes pathetic or tragic (or perhaps merely noble) while she drifts from disturbing encounter to encounter, photographing the fall of everything for an ever-shrinking audience.

So why only 3 1/2 stars? I admit, I was thrown by the novel’s close, which I won’t spoil here, though it felt both rushed and unresolved. Now, I’m one of the first guys to appreciate untidy endings, but if we spend a long (and fairly slow) unwinding of complex narrative, we too have an expectation: that some sort of internal settlement will follow, if not a physical one. Since we cannot escape the end of the world, we are left to the internal.

After such a powerful and compelling start, the novel ends as an action-plotted adventure story, and the significance of what it built for is nearly abandoned. And I’m not sure why. Ma certainly has the chops to find that space of–eh, we’ll call it “truth”–but she instead . . . runs away.