The Age of Miracles (Karen Thompson Walker)

      
  I don't read speculative fiction often but I do enjoy it the times I've allowed my mind to open and wonder and take in a whole new society and a whole new set of rules and of course the big question of fiction in general, What if???

Julia is our young protagonist who at 12 years old is facing a world where everything as she knows it is changing. The big questions is what if the Earth's rotation slowed so much that the days stretched into weeks? It doesn't happen overnight but over the course of the book the reader is immersed in a world where this is happening and what will become of our life if it did. Karen Thompson Walker has researched and found out what could actually  happen if the worlds revolutions slowed. And it ain't pretty. 

Animals die, crops die, the grass dies. People are thrown off by the lack of darkness and can't sleep. They are sunburned when the days stretch on end and the ozone changes and radiation seeps through. People are broken into two groups in the story; the people who follow "clock time" and the people who go with "real time" meaning that they follow their days by sunlight. They are basically ostracized and go and live off in their own communities and meanwhile Julia is nursing a huge crush on one Seth Moreno. 

Okay so the story's strengths rely on the interest of the premise. It was well written and I think it was equal parts "earth/chaos-related" and also the coming of age of our Julia. She loses her best friend for typical reasons and we feel her pain as she navigates her world basically on her own as her mother suffers from a syndrome assumed related to "the slowing" and her dad is busy doing other things that you find out as you read. 

I recommend reading this book as much as you can in one or two sittings. It reads quickly and isn't that long and very good if not quite disturbing. Just imagining this whole thing happening makes my stomach ache in fear.