Review of After the Fall by Edward Ashton

What if we were the pets to alien conquerors? Not an original yet definitely an intriguing premise. After the Fall is a surprisingly pathos-filled romp through an Earth ravaged by the Greys, where one man and his master struggle to eke out a living on the margins. I can’t say I loved it, but like many science-fiction humour novels, that could be more me than the book. I received an eARC from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.

John is a human, and like almost all humans left, he is a pet of a Grey. Despite the name, the Greys are not little grey men with spindly figures, big heads, and frail bodies. They are fearsome, leathery-hided beasts of creatures. If you upset one enough for it to “Absent,” then it will kill without mercy or memory. Fortunately for John, his master, Martok, is “one of the good ones.” Unfortunately for John, Martok is also more out and down on his luck than up and good. As the book opens, Martok and John have just been evicted. Martok uses John as collateral for a loan to start a hare-brained business venture … which John inadvertently turns into something very different.

The premise is definitely intriguing, and I especially like how Ashton doesn’t offer up too much exposition about how we got to now. Indeed, John is an unreliable narrator, for he was born in a creche and raised by Grey teachers, so he could only ever learn the victors’ propaganda. If you think this will be a Battlefield Earth situation where John ends up flying fighter jets and retaking his world, you’re mistaken. Nothing so revolutionary. This is a story of survival and making the most out of what you have with the people whose fates become entwined with yours.

I also really enjoyed the plotting and pacing. The inciting force that gets John wrapped up into so much trouble is equal parts tense and hilarious. Likewise, there were some other twists throughout that either I didn’t see coming or were telegraphed in such a way that they remained fun when revealed on page. So in that sense, Ashton provides a fair amount of narrative payoff.

Where After the Fall falls flat for me is its characters. John is quite literally a boring everyman. He stumbles his way through the plot, and any time he manages to take initiative, he makes things worse. I understand how this can be appealing for some readers, yet I’ve never been a big fan of this type of protagonist. The same is true for Martok. We’re supposed to see him as a sympathetic yet hapless Grey, someone who treats his pets (slaves) beneficently yet with the limited worldview of someone who has never questioned an unjust system. But his way of speaking is just so frustrating, and his lack of any self-awareness utterly demolishes any sympathy I might have for him.

The rest of the characters, including the two named women in the book, don’t have much going for them either. The character development in After the Fall is scant.

I don’t want to knock this book too hard. I think other readers who are more aligned with this subgenre will love it. Absurdist science fiction used to hit a lot better for me; I’m not sure if I changed or if the subgenre has or, likely, if it’s a combination of both. As it is, I just didn’t get much from this book, as creative as it is.