Product Description

The new Adam Roberts novel is a story of global apocalypse, old hatreds and new beginnings. It is his best novel to date. And this is how the world will end . . . 'The snow started falling on the sixth of September, soft noiseless flakes filling the sky like a swarm of white moths, or like static interference on your TV screen - whichever metaphor, nature or technology, you find the more evocative. Snow everywhere, all through the air, with that distinctive sense of hurrying that a vigorous snowfall brings with it. Everything in a rush, busy-busy snowflakes. And, simultaneously, paradoxically, everything is hushed, calm, as quiet as cancer, as white as death. And at the beginning people were happy.' But the snow doesn't stop. It falls and falls and falls. Until it lies three miles thick across the whole of the earth. Six billion people have died. Perhaps 150,000 survive. But those 150,000 need help, they need support, they need organising, governing. And so the lies begin. Lies about how the snow started. Lies about who is to blame. Lies about who is left. Lies about what really lies beneath.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #472206 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

DREAMWATCH
"The Snow strikes home as a cautionary tale. Engrossing, disturbing... a clever and thought-provoking post apocalyptic novel"

Review
"The Snow strikes home as a cautionary tale. Engrossing, disturbing... a clever and thought-provoking post apocalyptic novel" (DREAMWATCH )

"Adam Roberts is becoming increasingly masterful at stage-managing the props of science fiction, at revisiting the concerns of earlier writers with a modern eye" (ALIEN ON LINE )

"Intruiging, convincing and well thought-out" (Simon Withers SFX magazine )

ALIEN ON LINE
"Adam Roberts is becoming increasingly masterful at stage-managing the props of science fiction, at revisiting the concerns of earlier writers with a modern eye"

Customer Reviews

Disappointing
I've read all the other books by Adam Roberts and the description of the book made it seem like a great idea - but in the end I was disappointed. Maybe I missed the point, world wiped out by accident, but the main characters in the book just seemed so unlikeable that by the end I was past caring if they survived or not. And the world they inhabited - I think you'd be better off dead .. This was definatley the 'world ends with a whimper'type story but in the end the nastiness of the survivors and the mindset that comes over in the story made me think that it was not such a bad thing. Maybe that was the whole point but it made this book a vey tough read

A thought-provoking, low-key, slow-burner
A snowfall of Biblical proportions covers the Earth, and pretty much everyone dies. For the few survivors, life is white, cold and a repetitive daily struggle to carry on. Yet Adam Roberts manages to take this minimalistic world of endless hardship, and instead of grinding down the reader's patience with how many different ways he can describe blank vistas and snowdunes, he manages to use the white world more to invoke a feeling of "what lies beneath".

By concentrating on only two main characters, and splitting the "action" equally between their present-day troubles on the snow and their lives before the world changed, Roberts builds complete lives for his protagonists, and I found it very easy to care about what happens to them (though they are both far from sympathetic !).

For my money, the underlying plot (where did all this snow come from?) takes a backseat to the pervading sense of loss, as everything and everyone the survivors ever knew is buried beneath miles of snow. Not buried and gone, but buried and "still there" ; frozen but whole, untouchably distant. There is a well thought-out and interesting ending/explanation, but that is not really what the book is all about.

Not a lot happens, in truth. But this is a book that cries out to be read s-l-o-w-l-y, to let your mind wander, to think about your loved ones and what it would be like to leave them buried in a preserved world, miles under your feet. For a novel that is set under a blue sky, with a blank white horizon at every turn, I actually felt quite claustrophobic reading it.

Thats a generous 4 stars, probably closer to 3.3.
Ok, 1st things 1st why 4 stars not 3 if I felt it was about 3 1/3 stars, well this book did somethings that really annoyed me most particularly [Blank] spoke to [Blank] about [Blank] but [Blank] said that [Blank] had met [Blank]. This had me at times wanting to throw the book away!!! If it had been done for a few pages or a couple of chapters I could have lived with it, but when over half the book is written this way it really got to me at times.

That said I did like the story the Snow itself was cool, a plausible enough disaster scenario and was nicely delt with to start with. There where several big questions that the author never really tackled, like why the Americans felt the need to come over to the UK and start a city over London, how the snow miner machines worked, and how they managed to get planes above the snow, that said I didn't really mind those questions as the author gave enough explainations about his new world to keep it feeling real.

On the debate about the characters I liked Tira the 1st protagonist we where introduced to, they way she behaved seemed real to me as she came across as someone who was in shock and was just riding events. Far more a viewpoint than someone who did things or changed things. However I felt that [Blank] Fred the second character was more than a bit cardboard, this was annoying as he was a doer / victim (it was the victim but that really bugged me). This came to a head towards the end of the novel when he becomes vital to the story, and I just wanted him dead as he annoyed me so much.

Talking about the ending to this book, it came at me from so far out of the left feild that it left me cold when it hit. I just wish we had had some forewarning, I don't think it would have taken a lot, or spoilt the suprise if the possibility of this ending had been floated earlier in the book, even if done in a madman speach. That said once the shock had left and I re-engaged with the book I was left really enjoying the last couple of chapters. All in all I did enjoy this book and hope that the Author improves in the future, but I can't help but think the signing endorsements from critics and other authors might stop Mr Roberts from really looking at where he could improve in the future.