Throughout the first two volumes
of Harry Turtledove’s series Supervolcano,
Colin Ferguson has been trying to track down the miscreant responsible for
the sexual assault and murders of several old women.
Having successfully, if accidentally, found the culprit in All
Fall Down, Ferguson must deal with the aftermath of his revelation
in Things Fall Apart, which also continues to follow the lives of
Ferguson’s extended family ranging from band member Rob stuck in a Maine
cut off from the rest of the country by the bad weather, Vanessa, now returned to LA
and feeling entitled to a life she doesn’t have, Marshall, balancing his
burgeoning writers career with his more lucrative work as a baby sitter,
and Colin’s ex-wife, Louise, who is trying to get her own life on track,
perhaps a harbinger of what the future holds for Vanessa.
The
climate change which occurred following the eruption of the Yellowstone
Supervolcano in the first volume has become the new norm, with winter
settling in for ten months of the year in Maine and other Northern parts
of the country. An extended
winter in the Midwest causes problems for transportation and crops, while
part of the country remain completely uninhabited.
Los Angeles, where the majority of the novel takes place, now
suffers from seasonal weather changes unlike it has seen before.
Turtledove follows the characters
as they attempt to continue living their lives in a world in which power
outages, weather events, and lack of many modern conveniences are common
place, however, with the exception of Rob in Maine, the extent that things
are different don’t really hit home.
Ferguson’s wife, Kelly, is able to fly in and out of LAX for
research trips or to scientific conferences.
Initially, there is no disruption shown to her itinerary despite
what has been described. Eventually,
the cold does inconvenience her, but it seems like a minor inconvenience,
with Turtledove not showing the tribulations she faced getting home to her
children.
Unfortunately, the lack of
description of Kelly’s difficulties is demonstrative of one of the
weaknesses of the series. Rob,
living in frozen Maine, is shown getting acclimatized to his situation,
but his transition has been relatively painless.
Vanessa’s experiences in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption
were unpleasant, but she worked her way back to a relatively normal
situation. In Things
Fall Apart, the main area in which people are shown struggling are the
displaced people who are being settled in Wayne, Nebraska, where
Vanessa’s ex-boyfriend Bryce Miller has managed to build a life for
himself and his wife, Susan.
In many ways, the
Supervolcano series, and Things Fall
Apart in particular, are a slice of life story, although the slice of
life is in a world in which the social structure is falling apart.
While the characters have story trajectories, most notably
Colin’s dealing with the aftermath of the arrest of the South Bay
Strangler, which takes an unexpected twist, or Vanessa’s continuing
string of boyfriends, none of the characters have a goal in sight or even
in mind, they are all trying to live their lives as normally as possible
against the background which does provide visceral differences from our
own world. Originally announced as a trilogy, Things
Fall Apart leaves many hooks upon which Turtledove can continue his
story of the Ferguson clan and the post-eruption world.
