Nagamatsu examines the way a pandemic changes the world in the decades and even centuries that follow in chapters told from the perspectives of various linked characters. The story opens when Dr. Cliff Miyashiro journeys to Siberia to finish the work that claimed the life of his daughter, a passionate environmentalist. When Cliff and his colleagues accidentally release an ancient virus contained in the remains of a prehistoric girl frozen in ice, the world christens it the Arctic Plague. As the pandemic spreads across the earth, society finds ways to grieve and honor the dying and dead, including erecting an amusement park specifically for terminally ill children, creating robotic dogs that capture the voices and personalities of lost loved ones, and hotels where families can stay to celebrate the lives of those they've lost. The tragedy causes humanity to look to the stars for salvation, as Cliff's wife, Miki, sets off with their granddaughter and a contingent of pioneers hoping to establish a colony on a habitable planet. Both epic and deeply intimate, Nagamatsu's debut novel is science fiction at its finest, rendered in gorgeous, evocative prose and offering hope in the face of tragedy through human connection.

What happens to humanity when death radically outpaces life? Scientists digging in Siberia find the body of a girl who seems to be a mix of Homo sapien and Neanderthal while also possessing genetic traits that look like starfish or octopus. She's dressed in clothes remarkable not only for their fine needlework, but also for the fact that they're decorated with shells from the Mediterranean. Unearthing this girl releases a virus that destroys human organs. From this strange, terrifying beginning the narrative moves to the City of Laughter, an amusement park where children infected with the virus can enjoy one last, fun-filled day before riding a roller coaster designed to kill them. Nagamatsu's characters inhabit societies so overwhelmed by death that funerary services of various kinds dominate the economy and in which the past is disappearing while it's impossible to imagine a future. Many of the chapters in this novel were first published as short stories. Cobbling these stories together makes a novel-length book, but it doesn't necessarily make a satisfying novel. The different ways in which people deal with grief and survival accumulate without revealing new insights. The chapter in which a man contemplating suicide finds connection in a virtual world is an echo of the chapter about a man who repairs robotic pets who speak in the voices of the dead. A chapter in which a forensic pathologist falls in love with a man who has donated his body for research is virtually the same as the chapter in which a funerary artist who makes ice sculptures from liquified remains falls in love with a customer. And while there are characters who recur, a lot of these connections feel superimposed for the sake of crafting a novel. The final chapter--but for a brief coda--circles back to the beginning in a way that's thrilling for a moment. Then Nagamatsu lays bare the mystery of the opening chapter in a way that can only be rewarding for hardcore devotees of the ancient astronaut school of ufology or readers for whom this concept is entirely new. Ambitious, bleak, and not fully realized. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

DEBUT Following his short story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, Nagamatsu's exceptional debut novel reads as if it were from the pen of a more seasoned author. It keeps to the short form, as it is something of a collage novel. Following its bravura opening--an ancient plague is reawakened from the melting permafrost of Siberia--the narrative jumps ahead a few years with each successive chapter, charting the world's devastation as a roster of characters navigate myriad social and personal collapses. Nagamatsu masterfully folds more conceptual dystopian stories--reminiscent of George Saunders's early 2000s short story work--into the novel's broader climate and pandemic fiction story line, stacking his narratives and lending a sheen of surreality to even the most science-heavy moments. The result is an appealing mélange of literary and science fiction, with rich, mournful language aiding the imaginative strokes. This work reflects the best of what short fiction can accomplish, sketching memorable characters and settings with economy, but Nagamatsu manages to excel equally in the long form, subtly linking his narratives into a handsome whole. If at the end there's no denying the bleakness, Nagamatsu importantly resists nihilism, consistently finding beauty and meaning in the darkness, even at the end of the world. VERDICT A frightening, moving work about what it means to be human while staring down our own extinction. Essential.--Luke Gorham

Nagamatsu's ambitious, mournful debut novel-in-stories (after the collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone) offers a mosaic portrait of the near future, detailing the genesis and fallout of an ancient alien plague reawakened from a Neanderthal corpse thanks to the melting permafrost in the Siberian tundra. Combining the literary and the science fictional, each subtly interconnected chapter examines a point of failure during the dying days of the great human experiment: in the social safety net, in marriages, in families, and in compassion for non-humanoid life-forms. As the flu-like pandemic intersects with increasing climate change and exposes society's flaws, the characters bear witness to a massive extinction event happening to them in real time. Nagamatsu can clearly write, but this exploration of global trauma makes for particularly bleak reading: the novel offers no resolutions, or even much hope, just snapshots of grief and loss. (Those with weak stomachs, meanwhile, will want to skip the "Songs of Your Decay" for its graphic descriptions of corpse decomposition.) Readers willing to speculate about a global crisis not too far off from reality will find plenty to think about in this deeply sad but well-rendered vision of an apocalyptic future. Agent: Annie Hwang, Ayesha Pande Literary. (Jan.)