Time
has passed since the eruption of the supervolcano under
Yellowstone
National Park
in the first volume of Supervolcano,
Eruption.
In the second volume, All Fall Down, Colin Ferguson’s extended family, which includes
not only his ex-wife and children, but at least one of his daughter’s
ex-boyfriends, must deal with the results of the eruption, which is breaking
down supply lines and altering the weather throughout the country.
Turtledove has spread the family from
Maine
to the Midwest to
California
in order to demonstrate how different areas are coping.
Ferguson
and his new wife, Kelly, are still building their own relationship and
trying to figure out how to live with the rolling blackouts, internet
service outages, and food and gas rationing, when Colin's younger son,
Marshall, moves in with them while he figures out what it means to be a
college graduate in a post-eruption world. Colin's ex-wife, Louise,
must deal with the difficulties of becoming a single mother and working at a
food import company. Her story intersects with Colin's as their share a past
and three children, two of whom are located across the country from their
parents without any indication of when they might be able to get back.
All
Fall Down
often seems to be a bit rambling. Most
of the characters don’t have any specific goals, although Vanessa does
attempt to make it first out of the camps and then back to
California
,
Marshall
tries to sell his fiction, and Louise tries to deal with what life throws at
her. In fact, much of the book
seems to take the idea that it is senseless to make plans because the
universe is going to subvert them and run with it.
Even areas which could provide a sort of narrative structure, such as
Colin’s quest to find the South Bay Strangler, are downplayed, although
that plotline, introduced in the first volume, does progress.
There
is a sense that the infrastructure of the
United States
has managed to remain intact in spite of the massive devastation affecting
so much of the country. Rob and
his band are pretty much secluded in
Maine
, however a CNN news team is able to make its way up there to cover the
situation. Vanessa’s cross
country trek demonstrates price gouging and scarcity, although she is always
able to get the gasoline that she needs.
California is shown to be dealing with their own supply shortages,
but much of what is shown seems to be as much the cause of unemployment and
a worsening economy (exacerbated by the eruption).
Turtledove
has made some interesting choices in his characters' professions.
While Vanessa spends much of the book as a refuge and her mother works for a
ramen noodle company, Bryce Miller, Vanessa's ex-boyfriend, is a classics
professor, who somehow manages to find work in his own field in the
apocalyptic aftermath of the eruptions, just as Marshall manages to continue
to sell fiction in a country which has seemingly fallen apart. Colin's
own job, as a policeman, could provide some interesting views into the way
the police work with the National Guard to maintain order, or as a
procedural as he attempts to capture the South Bay Strangler, but neither of
those are where Turtledove wants to take the story.
Perhaps the most interesting sequences in the novel are those which
take place furthest from the Ferguson enclave as Colin's older son, Rob,
attempts to live in the frigid wilds of Maine, cut off from civilization and
power in a twenty-first century Currier and Ives setting. Although Rob
and other members of his band are strangers in the area, the climatological
conditions have stranded them in the small town of Guilford, where they have
to figure out how to live without the modern conveniences which Colin still
has, even if they are somewhat curtailed.
Although the world Turtledove depicts in Supervolcano
is interesting, it suffers from a lack of a goal beyond survival for most of
the characters. Turtledove's decision to keep so many of his
characters in the Los Angeles area, although he does show Vanessa's journey
across the remnants of the United States, Rob's sojourn in Maine, and a
brief glimpse into Nebraska, limits what he can do to show the varied
results and responses to the eruption. However, it will be interesting
to see where Turtledove plans to take his story in the next volume,
particularly given some of the personal revelations in All Fall Down.
