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I think it's probably impossible to talk about this book �� a book with a 2020 publication date that is about a global pandemic �� without reflecting heavily on the current real world situation. So many of the small details of this story hit so much harder than the author could have possibly imagined while writing it.

“You can’t imagine how much the world can change in six months. You just can’t.��

This would be a powerful quote in any context, but it stood out starkly while reading it with *gestures wildly around* all of this going on.

Early on in the book, a holiday to Disneyland features, set in the summer of 2020. I jokingly said to a friend "well, there goes the suspension of disbelief!", only to find out a few pages later that Disneyland, summer 2020... that's where these characters pick up this new virus which goes on to cause an apocalyptic global pandemic. Huh, bit on the nose.

In the world of Afterland, the virus is only deadly to men �� with an astonishingly high mortality rate. I say "men", but trans issues are discussed in the book further on, so it is more accurate to say that the virus is only deadly to people AMAB. The small number of male survivors are mostly taken to facilities, along with their female family members, for protection and testing. South African mother Cole is one of these family members, kept under lock and key by the government along with her son, Miles.

Thousands of miles from home (side note: a foreigner's narration of America makes for a brutally different one than you'd be likely to get from an American protagonist's perspective), they hatch an escape plan to get back to Johannesburg.

Some of the aforementioned small, world-building details that it turns out are painfully accurate include hand sanitiser selling out everywhere; scientific advice changing rapidly and older advice seeming quaintly naive in hindsight; and the pinpoint accuracy of the types of conspiracy theories that pop up (the virus being manufactured in a lab �� a North Korean lab in the book vs the Chinese lab of coronavirus conspiracies; the virus being caused by vaping vs coronavirus's 5G masts, etc).

A scene that stood out to me as particularly poignant was a visit to Ancient Puebloan cliff dwellings, which sees Cole reflect on a fallen civilisation while the world of the early 2020s is changing and crumbling around them.

I do feel like trauma could have been explored in far greater detail. The majority of the story is set in 2023 so only 3 years after the virus begins to properly take hold in the world and kill off almost half of the global population, and although it's touched upon, it struck me as a little unrealistic for so many of the characters to be so... ok. There is mourning, sure, but there's little collective trauma.

I found this book engaging, and the fast pace of it kept my nose fully in it. I think it will be very interesting to come back to and reread in a few years though, when it's (hopefully) a story less relevant to actual life.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

And one final note, one that I'm not sure has a point but I wanted to touch upon �� reproductive politics features heavily in the story, after all there are very few men surviving and procreation has been outlawed until the virus has been studied and conquered. I couldn't help but think about the fact that were the story about a virus that has killed off most of the female population, rape would have featured in the book fairly heavily.