Supernova Era by Cixin Liu and Joel Martinsen

A supernova right next door to Earth - cosmically speaking - showers the whole planet in deadly radiation. Only children's bodies can repair the damage in time. Everyone over the age of thirteen will be dead in less than a year from the incident.

As usual with translated books, the first thing; the translation. It's a strange one, this, because while the word for word translation is fine, no hang ups or odd phrases, it's still very clearly foreign, with different cultural mores.

I thought this would be an interesting read. I've always loved plague stories and especially child plagues. It sadly didn't live up. There's a lot of telling, far more narration than dialogue; the adults keep talking about how different the children's world will be, but they expect the children to literally pick up exactly where they left off; even considering the circumstances, the children are ridiculously adult. That's not counting the children who want to 'play' with high tech missiles because they're bored of shooting each other with machine guns, though.

It's not an awful read, but not the best either.








In those days, Earth was a planet in space.
In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth.
On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end.

Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of thirteen will die.

And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge they'll need to keep the world running.

But the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents' world. And though they imagine a better, brighter world, they may bring about a future so dark humanity won't survive.