Earth's End Trilogy by Sandy Nathan - Book 2!

I had already read the first book, The Angel and the Brown-Eyed Boy, when I was able to pick up the entire Earth's End Trilogy in one book... I'll be reviewing the next two books separately rather than as just one book... But before you start today, I recommend you read my review of the first book to briefly begin to know the characters that will become very important in the next two books...namely, Jeremy and Eliana... 

Because it had been quite some time since I'd read the first book, the second one caught me off guard... Earth's End had already occurred! Very few survived. This is their nearly disastrous story. Interestingly, Nathan chose to throw readers directly into earth's end and then in the third book comes back to provide the story of how the preparation for the disaster had come about. 

Readers are immediately, therefore, thrown into the horror of Earth's Ending...

Lady Grace and the War

for a New World:Earth’s End 2 

Sandy Nathan

“Come on, Ellie! They’ll let us go this time.” Jeremy dashed out of the tiny place where he and Ellie lived. His waist-length dreadlocks flopped behind him and his bare feet slapped the smooth surface of the hallway. The door’s membrane tried to catch Eliana, but she slipped through. His wife was as agile and beautiful as the day they’d met. He carried two bags of survival gear that he’d created from intergalactic junk. 

The goldies had swept the heavens to get him raw materials for construction projects. Before they’d given him something to do, Jeremy’s boredom-induced screaming fits had traumatized the planet. He and Ellie ran through a translucent passage in the planet’s depths, bells booming all around them. Chimes always sounded on the planet, carrying messages. These bells were alarms. 

Horrified faces wailed in the walls, pointing at them with luminous fingers. They were the souls of the departed elders and formed the elastic, semi-transparent substance of the golden planet. The whole world was some shade of amber— ranging from glowing yellow to almost black. Lights shone from the planet’s depths, raking arcs like searchlights and then fading. 

Jeremy galloped past Belarian’s grand, bejeweled palace. “Bitch,” he shouted and kept running. Belarian, the “mother” Eliana had missed so much when she was on Earth, was really her owner. She had tormented Jeremy. He made a quick turn, going up another corridor. Jeremy thought living in their adopted home was like being inside someone’s guts. Undulating, ribbed tubes ran everywhere. The tunnels moved and shifted. But Jeremy knew where he was. They were on a major thoroughfare that didn’t change. “Come on, guys! It’s on!” Jeremy shouted as they ran past James and Mel’s “place...”

That’s all they had: places. No street names, no addresses, nothing but places. The natives didn’t need anything more than knowledge of a place’s existence to find it, but finding anything was hard for the humans. “Come on, we’ve got to go!” Jeremy yelled to the guys. A glass-like amber sheet locked Mel and James into their space. Mel kicked at it with the bottom of his foot. The wall retracted before he touched it. He and his partner, James, slipped through. They took off after Jeremy...

He held his hand up to the door and made various gestures, ending by flipping it off. “We know you’re in there. What you’re doing is illegal. You brought us here under false pretenses...”

He choked out his message to the elders. “We thought you had a free society. We thought we would be equal citizens. We didn’t know you brought us here to experiment on!

“Let us in! You know what I’m saying is true!” He didn’t feel afraid. The elders had confined or tranquilized him after his previous outbursts, but they’d never hurt him. “We can’t stay here any more!” 

You can survive? 

“With the packs, yes.” 

We will send you now. We will send the others later, and your bags. 

Jeremy found himself sitting in the middle of a wide grassy field. He looked around, amazed. Brilliant blue sky. Trees bordering a meadow. Something else: the crash of surf. He was on Earth! He took a deep breath. Good old air. The place looked gorgeous. The trees were huge. Obviously the danger from radiation had been over for centuries.

~~~

Eliana had been used by the residents of another planet to persuade people from Earth to escape to their planet before the end of the earth. Jeremy, as well as other scientists and intellectuals, were invited and had accepted, believing they would be free to pursue their lives there...

Jeremy and Eliana had fallen in love and had a child...It was taken away from them as soon as it was born--just like every other child that had been born to earth's former residents. They definitely had not received the expected welcome and freedom.

Jeremy, a brilliant young man who had been told of the upcoming nuclear destruction of earth had created underground bunkers all over the world to save as many people as could be saved. While he loved Eliana, he had almost gone mad without work on his adopted planet...and expressed his anger loudly until they started gathering materials from other planets to allow him to continue his research and preparation for moving back to earth...

And now, after gaining support from a small group who were willing to go back, he had demanded that the elders allow it... They sent only Jeremy... He was alone on, thankfully, an earth that was totally free of the environmental dangers that had been there... But...now what?

He’d been returned to Piermont Manor. He was Jeremy Bentham Piermont Edgarton, heir to all he saw. He was in the good ol’ USA, in the great state of Connecticut. They’d send the others and his stuff soon. Everything was A-OK.

Jeremy was emaciated and arrived naked. No clothes were used on the gold planet and Jeremy had figured the goldies had wanted them to look like them...or else the loss of weight had simply come from having to eat seeds and the tasteless golden glop for thousands of years...

Nothing was left of the estate, he could look out and see for miles, but he slowly began to figure out the location of the various buildings... He knew approximately where the shelter was and wondered how things had gone...was there anybody alive? Occupancy by the scientists and scholars that had been intended for this shelter had been prevented when the nuclear blasts had come so fast. It was the small town of estate workers who had moved into the shelter.  Everything had to move so fast that he'd named his Headman as the leader and, worrying about the occupants, he had thrown out a list of suggestions on how to survive... One of the main commands had been to not marry cousins... Also, no drinking or drugs... The suggestions had remained and became commands... The underground had split based upon those who had followed the commands and those who had not...

Thinking back was interrupted by the sound of wolves...

The wolves howled again, coming closer. That’s when the nerve block wore off. They weren’t sending Ellie or anything else. He’d been a pain in the ass on Ellie’s planet, so they spit him back. They’d sentenced him to death.

~~~

But Jeremy was not the type to give up hope, especially when he found her...was it a far-distant relative of Flossie who had lived on the plantation? Was she friendly?

The bitch stood up and yipped, motioning him to follow with her head. She had a rabbit stashed by the oak’s trunk and grabbed it as she trotted into the forest. He could barely keep up with her. Only the howling behind him kept him going. She led him deep into the forest, to a hill he’d never seen with a small clearing in front of it. Flossie took him to a hole in the hillside and disappeared inside. He looked at it, not knowing if he could fit. A howl from the forest behind had him clawing at the hole’s dirt sides. He made his way in, leaving some of his skin on the walls. Inside, Flossie fed her babies while having her own dinner. She ripped the rabbit’s guts open and devoured the contents. She made a handy job of it, also consuming one of the rabbit’s hind legs. The rest, she prodded to him with her nose. 

“Thankee, Flossie,” he said, attempting to speak the brogue of the old village.

~~~

Thankfully the hounddog had not turned feral, and even offered him part of the rabbit he'd caught...Jeremy was hungry... but it took some time until he began to eat the raw meat... and gain strength to move forward...

If you can think of any backwoods horror movie you may have seen combined with the totally high tech facilities built to last for thousands of years if necessary, you will begin to understand what Jeremy might run into when he discovers that a shelter occupant has been thrown out  through an escape hatch...to see if he lived... Fortunately, he was right near the cylinder when Sam was thrown out... Jeremy quickly pantomimed for him to pretend he couldn't breathe and start screaming... Sam obeyed!

And then there were two humans on the earth's surface...

This trilogy has already won many awards, but, hey, books never die...each new reader shares the story and falls into the setting... Nathan has created a brilliant trilogy unlike any that I've thus far read. It merges old country ways with such hi-tech fantasy that readers are amazed by the facility that had been created (mostly seen in the final book) which allowed survival for thousands of years... If you love scifi and fantasy, don't pass up this entire trilogy! Highly recommended!

GABixlerReviews

I used to be a princess. My parents were born in the hungry days of the Great Depression. They overcame the poverty of their youth by becoming extremely successful. I spent my time showing horses and water-skiing behind my dad’s obscenely overpowered boat. That life vanished when a drunk driver hit my father head-on in 1964, killing him. 

Not instantly, though. My dad's death was the stuff of horror movies and plunged my family into years of darkness. 

My old life disappeared. I lived at close to poverty level for a while. What happened in the following decades opened my eyes. I've seen and lived the over-privileged existence I describe in the Bloodsong Series. I've seen how it can warp those who are lost in it. I've seen how the power of money can mask mental illness and allow evil to ruin lives.

I know the mental and emotional landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, as it has come to be known. I know the physical geography just as well; I lived on the San Francisco Peninsula for fifty years. I made my home in the iconic cities and towns of Atherton, Woodside, Cupertino, and Palo Alto during that time. 

How did such a hothouse flower end up writing the rough and visceral fiction I do? It’s because of what happened in those dark years. 

My writing has a bite. My life has had a bite. Recovering from what happened to me has taken many years. And I have recovered. What was legitimately mine came back to me, along with the fruit of my own labor. If your life echoes mine, you might like to see how I healed; it’s in my books. 

My writing isn’t for everyone. I write about people getting better and the world working out, but it’s not always gentle and nice. A reviewer described one of my books as “equal parts horror, spiritual, romance, and action.” If that’s for you, you’re my reader. 

I consider what I write as falling primarily into the visionary fiction genre, which is about psychological maturation and making the world a better place. I have had huge spiritual experiences all my life, as well as gentler, ongoing inner guidance. Whatever is behind these experiences and this earthly life wants me to tell you my visions through my tales: my darkness and light.

Now for my “regular bio”: I’ve been in school a very long time and have two advanced degrees. I’ve had prestigious careers. My writing has won thirty national awards. I’m very happily married; my husband and I have been together forty years. I have three grown children and two grandchildren. My husband and I live on our California horse ranch and love it. We still ride the trails together, metaphorically and on our horses.