Robert Harris has done speculative fiction before – Fatherland posited a world in which Germany had won World War II – but this time he imagines a new Middle Ages set 800 or so years in the future, after a 2020s Apocalypse caused by natural or man-made disasters or both. Unless you read the spoiler blurbs on the rear cover, it will take about 50 pages to get to the gist of the novel. Even then, Harris has many more secrets to reveal as he unpeels the onion. The theme isn't as speculative as all that, in reality. There is plenty of history to show that human progress can be halted or reversed: Witness the tearing down of Roman structures for building materials when civilization was overturned, or the death cult that causes millions of people to reject life-saving medicines.
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