Humankind has been reduced to the height of a handspan – a transformation that is both potentially lethal and exasperatingly inconvenient.
On a remote coastal path, Giles awakes in his new body to discover a world reshaped and magnified into a place of astounding abundance and deadly peril. Desperate to reconnect with his loved ones, he seeks the help of fellow survivors, and together they embark on a quest across the altered landscape. But as their journey unfolds, the more the question persists – are they still truly human, or has their reduction in size marked the beginning of a descent into savagery, an evolution into something other?
Elsewhere, one week earlier, Professor Elizabeth Goodwin makes a monumental discovery – God is alive and physically among us, but not in the form we’ve been taught to expect. As Goodwin prepares to make first contact with the omnipresent ocean-spanning creature, forces conspire in the wings, and the spectre of imminent catastrophe inches closer and closer still . . .
The Expanded Earth is the first in a trilogy of spec fic novels with a terrifying premise; all at once, (almost) every human on Earth is shrunk to one tenth their former size. Only flesh, blood and bone resize; people with implants, fillings or even contact lenses die very quickly, and others drown in their own expelled fat or are crushed under the heavy items they were carrying at the time. The narration estimates that one in nine people survived the moment of shrinking, a number skewed heavily towards younger people and soon reduced by the secondary effects; people driving cars or on planes, in rooms with closed doors, or sharing their space with cats or dogs. Hair explicitly doesn't shrink and some people become entangled in it or trapped by it.
The newly small people are constantly hungry and cold as their metabolisms struggle to adjust. They are now less vulnerable to falls and seem stronger for their size; most are only starting to realise that as the novel concludes, as they're still locked into old ways of thinking. However, everyday life is now an unrelenting struggle; literally nothing is sized for their use, and every animal is now a huge danger. When one character is injured, they have to wrap a plaster around him because they can't stitch it, and they have to break open an antibiotic to feed him the granules inside in an attempt at care.
The book did look at a lot of the problems that would come with being suddenly so small, but ignored a few that I thought of as I read - though they may be mentioned in later books! For instance, the narration had a throwaway mention that some of the characters were riddled with insect bites. At that size, insects would be a deadly problem! Ants could easily overpower and carry the characters away, mosquitoes could drain them in seconds, and spiders would likely see them as a food source. Granted, the story only covers the first few days immediately after the event, with a few interludes covering longer time spans, so hopefully the next ones will really dig into the implications. (Rats!)
The story is told in two timelines; one immediately post-Event, and one starting a week before it and running up to it. There are occasional interludes that cover different time periods - a couple of days, an adult lifetime, hundreds of years - but the main story focuses on those two weeks. The constant jumps back and forth might not suit everyone, but most of the problems ironed themselves out as the story moved on. There's one point where a character says three or four days have passed, while the narration has only referred to two nights, but that could easily be confusion on the part of the characters, who have after all been through something fairly traumatic.
This is one of those novels that ends on genuine cliffhangers - not just unresolved threads but real, proper, immediate threats. This is not my favourite way for a story to end, but I will be watching for the next one - I would have anyway as this kind of story is right up my alley, but I definitely will now!
A quick note; the cover suggests that this is an illustrated novel. The illustrations are only at the end of chapters, at least in my proof copy, so I don't think that 'illustrated novel' really applies; to me that implies something closer to a graphic novel, but of course others may understand it differently. The images themselves are lovely, though they were hard to see in my ebook format; I'm looking forward to seeing them in person.
This is a great read for those readers who enjoy spec fic or horror - the more you think about this, the more horrific scenarios you're likely to think of! I thought of several as I was reading, which I won't list here, but I'd love to hear what you think of as you read.
Movie Recommendation: For a more lighthearted look at a similar scenario, try Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The children end up at the far end of their own garden and it takes them a couple of days to get back to the house, though they are smaller than the characters in this novel end up.
Book Recommendation: The classic of the genre is The Shrinking Man. Scott Carey shrinks much more slowly than the characters here, but he doesn't stop, continuing to get smaller and smaller as the novel continues.
The Expanded Earth publishes on the 3rd of April, 2025. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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