The Rending and the Nest by Kaethe Schwehn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a strange, wondrous book. A blurb on the back cover draws attention to its post-apocalyptic literary cousins, Oryx and Crake and Station Eleven, and those comparisons ring true. While The Rending and the Nest is less interested in the why and the how of the apocalypse, there is a similarity in the quiet pace and menacing atmosphere. The few possible explanations that come out of this book are tempered by reader interpretation; this is not a story to be passively read. The lingering message of the book is that Mira and the other survivors will never know why the Rending happened or why their Babies are not flesh-and-blood children, and it doesn’t matter why. All that matters is the stories they choose to tell themselves about what happened.

Something that struck me at the end of the book is the respect with which the women of Zion are treated after giving birth to their Babies. In an impossible situation that no one else understands, other characters still respect the love and attachment that Zion women feel for them.

This is definitely a book I will want to read again. Another win for my post-apocalyptic shelf.

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