Status Updates From Plus haut dans les ténèbres

They don't stay around long enough to have a lasting impact. Which is def fine if I'm getting more world-building. I just need something more tangible I think

I’d give this a 3.5

it definitely should not say “a novel” on the cover b/c this is clearly a short story collection with a thematic through line but it doesn’t allow much character development or reader attachment to occur. Characters do not have distinct voices so each new chapter just felt like a hammering home of the shared grief etc

I did yearn for more of the sci-fi element and got it in concentration towards the end, but good golly the actual nature of the virus changing heart cells to brain cells etc etc is crazy! That alone is so scary I wanted to dive deeper into that but alas that was not the point of this novel and I can respect it buttttt

The more personal stories while a little boring in comparison, still did accomplish the message that grief is prevalent and global while still being deeply individual. The highlights are the euthanasia theme park which was particularly sad as well as the talking pig mostly for the voice acting

Review:

This was a collection of short stories set in the same universe across time and while it wasn’t a long read it did take a bit to get me into it. My fave chaps are ofc the ones with less mundane scopes incl the opening where we see the onset of the virus, the afterlife chapter lending the book it’s title, and the founder of the planet chapter where we get a large tie-in to all we’ve read up until this point.

Notes:

- oh god money has been replaced by mortuary crypto LMAOOO
- LOTR ref!
- VA in pig son did his thing
- The virus turning brain cells to heart cells etc is creepyyyyyy
- w/o the audiobook I'm starting to think these characters have the same voice
- Founders!
- 6000 years... geez

I'm already traumatized

she lives many lives and ends up falling in love with the scientist who created the singularity for the spaceship, she wears a crystal necklace that calls for her daughter back on the seed planet

The Yamato ship returns to earth 6000 years later finally getting messages from earth, in the time they’ve been gone a sphere was built around the sun to power cities on mars and the moon, trials for human rights to AI

World builder sent to earth to plant seed, but in her shape shifting to humanoid there was an imperfection passed down to her Neanderthal daughter Annie thus arctic virus, she was told to observe only but she wanted to make earth feel like home, started a family

Man working at funeral services falls in love with a client who dies and after setting her body to sea as she wished he brings her back in

Woman goes back to visit her family in Japan who she ran away from her

At the end of the world one neighbor hosts a bbq party

Akira has VR relationship with woman who has a sick daughter and estranged father, coincidentally he gets employed by her fathers, she eventually does euthanasia in her and her daughter

Yamato ship is built, Clara's mom and daughter from 1st chap, they head to a planet 50 light years away, she and another passenger paint murals to spruce up the ship, at their destination they receive a delayed message that earth found a cure and is bouncing back, they keep finding planets not fit for earthlings and have traveled over 6000 years spending at most a year awake they make it to Kepler

Aubrey works at research facility and has only worked with cadavers until first infected Laird agrees to donate his body once he dies to research, they grow close and when he dies she reads the letters he left her

The brother of the funeral motel helped build a mini black hole, nasa wants to go to the Kepler system

Man’s son Aki and him manage a robo-dog fix up store, new experimental drug showcases cosmic marks on a customer’s kids cheeks, whenever he can’t fix a robodog he tends to try to lie a bit to not crush their spirits, his wife died, he created resentment w/ Aki when he also tried to stay positive about her diagnosis now he socializes only w dog Hollywood who has his late mothers voice and is also starting to breakdown

He gets a call from his brother that their mom passed and the man needed to keep her at the hotel to make up for everything, he imagines all the things he should’ve said and didn’t