I have mixed feelings about this book and the previous volume (Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream). The first book, The Ragged World, set up an intriguing scenario I wanted to see play out, but it didn't. Ms.Moffett's writing is fabulous. Lyrical, emotional, absorbing...great skill. Good dialogue and real characters too. As explorations of grief and self-discovery, the books were great. As science fiction, not so much. SF should ask the question "What if?" and then answer it. What if aliens showed up and told the humans to fix the world? Moffett told us a lot about Liam's grief for Jeff, and Pam's body image problems and unhappy childhood, a bit about homesteading and child abuse and Mormons and rock art, but really very little about what's happening in the post-Hefn world or how most humans were coping. We're told that Hefn rule isn't going well, but few details. Plot holes and inconsistencies and all the little rabbit trails made me keep leafing back to see if I'd missed something. I did like the revelation close to the end, it was the most SF-nal element of the last two books.
I'll end with a big caveat though. I freely admit I'm not the most sensitive reader when it comes to symbolisms, allegories, parables and so forth. So if we were supposed to substitute the alien invasion for some other underlying message, I didn't get it, and no doubt all my questions were the wrong ones.

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