I have mixed feelings about this book. It took me some time to adjust to the narrator's style, which initially threw me off. Even after getting accustomed to it, I still couldn't fully engage with the story. However, I do acknowledge that the plot was intriguing, and I can imagine that there are readers who would genuinely enjoy it. Personally, I wasn't completely sold on it. On the positive side, the overall flow of the book was smooth, and it featured decent characters and exciting action scenes.

I received an ARC of this book and did not realise that it follows on from a trilogy, so I had some confusion with parts of the story.
I find myself in agreement with other reviewers- I wanted to like it more as dystopian sci-fi is a favourite genre of mine.
It was readable, but did not have enough plausibility for me.
These aliens -actually the ‘original’ humans have ‘seeded’ the earth with humanity, then been in cryo-sleep for basically the whole of human evolution, yet seem to be genetically similar to humanity of today, rather than, say Neanderthals or any of the early hominids? Unlikely.
And the first thing that happens is because humanity hasn’t developed along a strictly formulated path, into dutiful believers of a vast intergalactic cult-who the aliens have had no contact with for hundreds of thousands of years, nor are ever likely to-the entire planet has to be wiped out. Factions develop amongst the aliens- proving that they are very much human, after all- and the destruction is stopped, but not before the human population is reduced to a tiny fraction, and thus dystopia begins…
The dystopian world painted was pretty typical of the genre-homicidal despot takes over New York, main character must set out on a mission ( inspired somewhat mystically), succeeds but gets captured by bad guy/ maybe good guy somewhat unconvincingly, and taken to despot. Aliens then get involved and things basically go pear shaped….wait for next instalment.
It doesn’t bring anything new to the concept of dystopia, but that’s generally ok- most stories tend to have similarities. But it didn’t have me suspending disbelief, which is a major necessity when trying to pull a reader into the world you’ve created.

This was a strange post-apocalyptic novel where I felt flat-footed the whole time, like I was missing key elements of the backstory and ongoing plot. Three years earlier, Sarah was on a research vessel that uncovered an ancient ship in the depths of the ocean. Turns out it was aliens and large portions of the earth have now been decimated. Sarah is living on the ship with the aliens and is in a relationship with and pregnant by one of the aliens. She makes the inexplicable decision to sneak off to travel across a decimated wasteland to get to her sister. I enjoy a post-apocalypse novel but this world and its main character were inexplicable to me.

Sarah has lived on the ship for three years, after being one of the first to make contact with a race of beings who claim they were sent to Guide humanity. When she learns that her sister may still be alive, somewhere on the broken earth beyond the ship, she escapes the safety of her new home and sets off through the wastelands of Europe and America to find her.

Firstly, I should say that this is, in fact, a sequel to a completed series. I didn’t know that when I started reading, but it didn’t impact the experience too much. There’s definitely some worldbuilding I feel I missed out on, and some character depth, too, but the character relationships feel well-established and are easily picked up. It’s a pacey, action-focused novel that could easily be translated to the screen, but there were a few places it lost me.

Without delving into spoilers, I found the final third of the book unconvincing at best. The book’s structure suggests a particular ongoing arc that doesn’t appear or become important until that final section. The various questions the book raises are, in the manner of so many action blockbusters, bundled into a paper ball marked ‘Deus Ex’ and promptly forgotten or ignored.

I was also constantly aware – with no knowledge at all of the author – that this book was written by a white American, particularly in the religion of the Guides and in its treatment of some of the (human) characters of colour.

Take from that what you will.

Rating: ★ ½
Genre: Sci-Fi, Post-Apocalyptic
Would I recommend this? No
Would I read a sequel? No. And I won’t be reading the original series, either

If you’re looking to read about a dystopian post-apocalyptic world, with the disaster having been brought on by aliens, should you try this book? “When the Dust Fell” by Marshall Ross surprised me in many ways – not all of them good.
The Blurb
Sarah Long was a geologist scanning the Mariana Trench when she discovered a ship deep in the ocean. Her trying to see what the mystery ship was, is what woke it up. It’d been three years since that moment, the moment the world changed forever. Since then, she had been living on the alien ship, with Trin, her alien boyfriend. She had used her time to learn the alien language and their ship’s secrets.

We come to know her when she receives a message from her sister that she is alive and needs help. The message comes in a very strange form, but she follows up on it anyway, so we witness her journey home, through a changed world. And in this new world, the mayor of New York, self-proclaimed king of New York, thinks Sarah might be useful to his own plans.

Spoiler-free Opinions
I was enthusiastic about the book, especially because in the first few pages we find out so many things that can set such wonderful scenes. However, the enthusiasm slowly died off when Sarah made some inexplicable, not really believable decisions. That made her soon very disagreeable as a main character. However, she is the only one developed enough that we can form an opinion on. Trin, the alien boyfriend, is ok-ish as well, though he did nothing to make me like or dislike him.

The most interesting character, weirdly enough, was the mayor of New York, Tom Nader. He is a self proclaimed king and rules the city and near by areas. Everyone fears him, as he searches for more and more power. And if you want to know how this relates to Sarah, either read the book or the spoiler filled section 😉

I wish so many things were different for this book! We get so, so little detail as to what exactly happened when the alien ship came to life that it made me not really care about the current state of affairs. Basically half the world was turned to dust and we don’t witness any of it, we just see its fall out and it gives us the idea that something is missing.

We know Sarah sets off to help her sister, but the way she does it is so sketchy and completely unreasonable.

We know Sarah had agreed to come to the ship to learn more about it and for the aliens to understand us better, but what was the point?

Why weren’t there other contacts made with official governments etc.? It seems the aliens agreed there is no point in killing everyone, but it also didn’t seem to have another plan. For three years, the ship just established itself in a perimeter and defended itself. Three years is a long, long time to do nothing. The whole thing seem pointless. It is also a long time not to have contact with one’s sister and yet determine she needs to set off looking for her on her own.

A thing that pleasantly surprised me was the setting of the ship in Russia. It also talked a bit about Putin and Europe so it gave me the illusion it’s something we can live through any time soon. I loved that, especially because most of these books only talk about the impact of such a world changing event on the U.S.. Nobody thinks twice about what happens to the rest of the world. This was a welcomed change.

For a post-apocalyptic novel it was sluggishly paced. I also didn’t connect with the characters. It seemed to me like a plot-driven book, with a badly written plot and the few interesting ideas it had – not at all well developed.

The writing was fine. I really appreciated how smooth the transitions were from Sarah’s journey to her time on the ship, but it didn’t hit all the good stuff you expect in this genre. I read a lot of this kind of literature and it should have been a lot more thought provoking, especially since the premise involves God. I won’t say how it involves him, but that is the book’s most interesting part.

Spoiler-filled Opinions – Stop, if you want to read the book first
Sarah has a comfortable life aboard the Kalelah, the alien ship, and seems to be in love with Trin. She is currently pregnant with him and still decides to leave without warning him. She decides to find her sister after receiving an obscure message from her. The message comes from persons aboard the ship, who later don’t remember having talked to her. So there is a bit of something paranormal happening that doesn’t seem to affect Sarah at all and doesn’t seem to make her reflect more about her decision to leave, not even about the part of not telling anyone she’s leaving. Nothing in this premise makes any sense at all and it was enough to infuriate me. I kept on reading and the action develops a lot more naturally from this point on. Sadly, I don’t feel it’s enough.

I loved the mayor of New York. He seems to have more clear reasons for doing things and seems to reflect more about the state of the world. He is the one giving us a bit of insight into people’s minds after society collapsing and I appreciated that. However, though he wants Sarah on his side in a grandiose plan of rebuilding the society, he goes about it in a very convoluted and ultimately wrong way. He also doesn’t seem to mind killing whomever is no longer necessary to him, without real reasons for it.

Sarah’s journey to the mayor is filled with little crisis. They hardly seem too bad for an apocalyptic book, especially as people decide to help her fairly often and she successfully kills whoever is a menace with her alien weapons.

An interesting thing was how the ship had an A.I. that developed feelings for Trin. The A.I. was the one that helped Sarah escape the ship and kept the fact hidden from Trin. That was a great plot twist and it really made the A.I. seem very human-like.

But the best thing about it was that God was just an alien on their original planet, their own king-like figure. Anything around that – I just couldn’t get enough of! I was sorry it was superficially treated, I would have loved to know more about the alien world, as well as how this knowledge would impact religions on Earth.

All in all, I didn’t enjoy this book. It was too slow paced for my taste, I didn’t care at all about the characters and the plot was very implausible. However, I am a picky reader and have very big expectations about post apocalyptic reads. Please, feel free to check it out for yourself.

P.S. I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley. Watch on Goodreads here the publication date if you want to purchase it.

Hmm this is a very difficult book to rate, because there’s nothing wrong with the way it is written but I feel that many things are missing and others kind of drag, actually this book feels like a continuation, like a second volume or something, because, I wanted to know how the world come to an end, what did the circle did, who was involved, how the people who are involved were, how Sarah and trim got involved one with the other, not just mentioning that it happened, I mean she is a human, he is an “alien” they’re supposed to be different, and he does seem different, but that difference goes up in smoke when he uses the “f” word as a sailor would… yeah...

I wanted to know more about what happened to the world, that beautiful black dust, but what Sarah saw in her travels was more like a “normal” violent and greed world than a post-apocalyptic one, and there where so many people for a world that was supposed to be almost devoid of life…

Hmm it gives us hits of paranormal, with people talking about Sarah sister, Margareth, rushing her to meet her sister, and then she decided to run away from Trim and go to her sister, but shouldn’t she have said something to him, since they were living together… and she is pregnant with his child, that gives him some right at least to know what she intends to do (at least in my view)… but I don’t want to give spoilers, for me this book was lacking while being well written, but I didn’t empathize with the characters… they felt a bit empty for me…

Thank you NetGalley for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

Sarah Long was working on board an ocean research vessel when the world changed. An enormous ancient alien spacecraft was found at the bottom of the ocean. It was not empty. First contact did not go well. The world crumbled. After the dust settled onto the broken world Sarah is now living aboard the ship, living with these aliens. Then she suddenly gets a message that her sister is alive and needs help.

So she packs a bag, and heads out in secret to try to save her. In the three years since the discovery of the alien craft the world has changed drastically. It is in ruins, with cities levelled, no infrastructure, and places ruled by those who wielded weapons and cruelty as power. Sarah has to make it halfway across the world, fighting off those who would harm her, steal from her, or worse.

Just as she thinks she has arrived at her destination, things get decidedly worse, and Sarah realises she has made a deadly mistake. Will she and her unborn child survive?

On paper this should be a great read, scifi, apocalyptic, dystopian future world, how will the human race survive, man vs aliens. However some parts of it didn’t sit quite right with me, and I found some decisions made by the characters irrational, and some of the plot twists and directions just too much of a jump. I don’t want to describe any so as not to give spoilers, but some of the leaps of, ‘well how is that person there all of a sudden, when there is no internet to research, and find out about that other person etc.’, a bit jarring. Sarah’s decision to set off on her own and not tell anyone what she was doing or why was just bizarre. The rationale for this didn’t seem to make sense. Overall the story started well, but I found I was not as engaged by it as I hoped. While the mixed viewpoints were good to keep things moving, it was a little repetitive at times as the dialogue in the alien ship never progressed much. In general a good read to pass the time, but I wouldn’t be rushing for the sequel that seems to be hinted at the end.

*I received this book from NetGalley for review, but all opinions are my own.

I’m the first to rate and review this book. Wish I liked it more. But let’s go with the best policy on this.
When the Dust Fell is one of those perfect examples of a book I should have by all right loved and didn’t. It checks so many boxes: dystopia, sci-fi, survivor story. The entire thing is essentially a heroic journey or quest or one of those. And yet, for some reason, much like dust, it fell completely flat for me.
This is quite likely one of those very personal, very subjective book/reader disconnects so please take it as such. Objectively, the book was competently done, solidly written and all that.
The story goes like that – a spaceship is found randomly beneath the sea. Lo and behold – ancient aliens. For real, people. An ancient alien race of perfectly humanoid beings that seeded the Earth. And they are from a very uninspiredly named planet Origen. Right in time to watch the earthlings destroy themselves through war and subsequent devastation.
The intrepid protagonist of the novel is navigating this world the best she can – by shacking up with a hunky alien dude. And then she gets the idea to go save her sister whom she hadn’t seen in years and so she sets off on this epic journey amid the devastated US.
Meanwhile, Manhattan has been taken over by one of those classic antagonist-type dudes, all charisma and evilness, who declared the place his Kingdom. Then man wants some alien technology to add to his arsenal and one of his minions offers to get it for him, through a woman he heard about once, a woman who cohabitates with the aliens.
Their trajectories very, very slowly and unevenly go from parallel lines to meeting ones. And then there’s a confrontation – inevitable because, among other things, the alien dude is quite a romantic.
So, that’s the book. Not especially original, in a way that most of the major plotlines are recognizable from other sources. Not especially dynamic, quite slow, in fact. Not especially engaging, either, but then again, that may be a personal thing.
Overall, didn’t really work for me and read long. User mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.

In the not so distant future, earth, as we know it, has ceased to exist. The discovery of a very old, very large ship has had terrible repercussions, war left North America damaged be beyond repair, infrastructure and government collapsed. In the midst of this wreckage, Sarah, newly returned from the ship, is searching for the man she loves. Ross’s depiction of a post apocalyptic (former) United States is terrifying. I really enjoyed his “brave new world”, but I didn’t care much for the characters, who seemed a little one dimensional