This is a fabulous horror novella. The narrative consists of a series of vignettes, kind of like "a day in the life" of a young woman in a ruined New York City twenty-five years after an apocalypse. Said apocalypse supposedly started in NYC, when it was discovered that women were giving birth to possibly extraterrestrial monstrosities. This plague soon affected every woman on the planet, resulting in, basically, the end of the world.

The narrator is especially interesting, a young woman with no definite name, who records some of the events that happen to her in ruined NYC. This limited POV works wonders for the story, as it forces the reader to piece together the larger picture on their own, since very little of the extent of the disaster is explicitly stated. This gives the tale an extremely eerie and haunting effect.

I went into this expecting to like it, as I have been an admirer of Kiernan's work for years, and I wasn't disappointed. It's one of the best post-apocalyptic stories of recent years. ( )