Scan barcode
A review by trike
After the Flood by Kassandra Montag
2.0
This is [b:The Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1439197219l/6288._SY75_.jpg|3355573] meets Waterworld, not exactly a tasty combination. You can make anything work if you sell it right, but I simply didn’t buy into the premise, which is that the world has flooded so completely that only mountaintops are above the sea.
First of all, if the worst-case scenario of global warming happens and all the ice on the planet melts and the water increases due to thermal expansion, then the oceans will rise about 200 feet. That’s enough to drown the coasts and completely submerge places like Florida and most of Nicaragua, and we’d lose cities like Sydney and Venice, but more than half of the land would still be there. (I just googled it and it’s 216 feet.) Here’s an interactive map: https://cartoscience.users.earthengine.app/view/sea-level-rise (Here in the middle of New Hampshire I’ll be walking distance from the shore. But still dry.)
So there’s that. But here’s another thing to consider: with less land, hurricanes and typhoons increase in power. One of the reasons there are so many dinosaur fossils is because the ancient continents of Pangea and, later, Laurasia + Gondwana meant that the Earth had a gigantic ocean, which fueled superstorms called hypercanes. Those then flooded low-lying areas, wiping out animals by the hundreds of thousands in a single storm. So not only will land disappear, the weather will get worse. Vicious, ferocious storms will be the norm, and they will be everywhere.
That’s not really a survivable scenario if you eliminate 99% of land as Montag has done. Also, where is everyone getting their bread in this book? Few people I know are aware of where their food comes from, nevermind what goes into producing it. With modern farming we can get about 2,500 loaves of bread from one acre of wheat. But that’s under ideal conditions. The soil on mountaintops next to the ocean is not ideal, to say the least.
Then there’s the sailing. The time and distance are all over the place. In the early parts of the book it seems to only take them a few days to travel thousands of miles, while later on it becomes more realistic and it takes them weeks. And then they encounter icebergs. Which means the water didn’t come from global warming. So I don’t know where it’s from, then. How is that no boats survived the flood? No yachts, no naval ships? I mean, an aircraft carrier has more than 6,000 sailors aboard. The US currently has 11 carriers. With their attending fleets that’s over 80,000 sailors. Where are those guys?
These things kept bothering me throughout the story.
The characters weren’t a joy to be around, but given the setup that’s understandable. Instead of a father/son team like in The Road we have a mother/daughter one, which is cool, but it did strain credulity later on facing off against pirates. And the fact no navies survived to deal with pirates when it’s only been about 10 years since the world-ending flood.... Hard to buy into.
All in all it feels like a poorly thought out world, which was constantly bugging me.
First of all, if the worst-case scenario of global warming happens and all the ice on the planet melts and the water increases due to thermal expansion, then the oceans will rise about 200 feet. That’s enough to drown the coasts and completely submerge places like Florida and most of Nicaragua, and we’d lose cities like Sydney and Venice, but more than half of the land would still be there. (I just googled it and it’s 216 feet.) Here’s an interactive map: https://cartoscience.users.earthengine.app/view/sea-level-rise (Here in the middle of New Hampshire I’ll be walking distance from the shore. But still dry.)
So there’s that. But here’s another thing to consider: with less land, hurricanes and typhoons increase in power. One of the reasons there are so many dinosaur fossils is because the ancient continents of Pangea and, later, Laurasia + Gondwana meant that the Earth had a gigantic ocean, which fueled superstorms called hypercanes. Those then flooded low-lying areas, wiping out animals by the hundreds of thousands in a single storm. So not only will land disappear, the weather will get worse. Vicious, ferocious storms will be the norm, and they will be everywhere.
That’s not really a survivable scenario if you eliminate 99% of land as Montag has done. Also, where is everyone getting their bread in this book? Few people I know are aware of where their food comes from, nevermind what goes into producing it. With modern farming we can get about 2,500 loaves of bread from one acre of wheat. But that’s under ideal conditions. The soil on mountaintops next to the ocean is not ideal, to say the least.
Then there’s the sailing. The time and distance are all over the place. In the early parts of the book it seems to only take them a few days to travel thousands of miles, while later on it becomes more realistic and it takes them weeks. And then they encounter icebergs. Which means the water didn’t come from global warming. So I don’t know where it’s from, then. How is that no boats survived the flood? No yachts, no naval ships? I mean, an aircraft carrier has more than 6,000 sailors aboard. The US currently has 11 carriers. With their attending fleets that’s over 80,000 sailors. Where are those guys?
These things kept bothering me throughout the story.
The characters weren’t a joy to be around, but given the setup that’s understandable. Instead of a father/son team like in The Road we have a mother/daughter one, which is cool, but it did strain credulity later on facing off against pirates.
Spoiler
It’s just hard to buy that a woman could so easily overpower a man and slit his throat, especially after she had been on short rations for weeks and he was well-fed and fully functional with, presumably, years of battle under his belt. Women can be absolute badasses, but most men are simply bigger and stronger than most women. Yet she dispatched numerous bad guys easily. I would have bought into it if she had used cunning, guile and quickness, but she just straight up overpowers men. Yeah, no.All in all it feels like a poorly thought out world, which was constantly bugging me.