A review by mckibbin
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

2.0

Karen Thompson Walker starts with an intriguing premise, blending a basic YA coming-of-age story with a strong sci-fi hook (the earth no longer allows its days to be measured in neat, predictable 24-hour units). It's interesting to think about where the tipping points would occur - how would crops survive 20 hours of sunlight followed by 20 hours of darkness, etc etc? Will people behave differently on "dark days" opposed to "light days"? The plot doesn't hold up, though, and the big questions are mostly skirted. I glossed over the "science" (dubious even by genre standards), but got hung up on the implausible and ill-explained friction between people who continued using clocks and those who didn't. Shoehorned dystopia, basically. On the more traditional side of the story, there are some understated moments that poignantly capture pre-teen alienation and the mindless cruelty of kids. Other times, though, the protagonist sounds way more like an adult woman than a young girl - and the characters surrounding her feel flat on the page (including a laughable love interest - a brooding, skateboarding, 12-year-old-or-so cipher).