This book is not so much about the end of the world itself; instead, it uses the end of the world – the end of most of mankind, anyway – as a plot device to explore how a new, small, totally contained society would develop out of the leavings of the old one. This task it accomplishes quite well; the growth of the Tribe in San Francisco and their mythological beliefs, traditions, and practices is fascinating, if a little slow-moving in several parts. But because societal development is the primary concern of the novel, the little details are simply glossed over, and there are so many technical errors or things left unexplained that it had a tendency to lift me out of the story and re-engage my disbelief. For instance, most of mankind is wiped out by a mysterious, very viral disease, but it’s never explained what the disease is, where it came from, or why some people are immune. In fact, the main character of the book comes down out of the hills after it’s all over, having no idea what was going on the “civilized” world, but he shows a total lack of curiosity about what happened to everybody that I found unbelievable. And when several survivors get together, they never discuss where they were or what happened to them when the Great Disaster (as it’s called in the book) went down, which I think goes totally against human nature. And the survivors continue to live off the leavings for forty or more years afterward, eating canned food that must have long since gone bad and even smoking cigarettes that had to have been unsmokeable after at least a year. They never bother to start even a rudimentary garden – an idea which I think would have occurred to just about anybody – but somehow manage to live in nearly perfect health until old age without eating any fresh fruits or vegetables. Again, I understand that these details weren’t important to the author, but they were important to me, and so these little problems served to disrupt what was otherwise a well-written, intriguing take on the old end-of-the-world plot.