Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress

Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress is a novella and the first longer work I've read by the author. I've previously read some miscellaneous short stories. It's near-future science fiction and I didn't quite enjoy it as much as I'd hoped to.

Aliens have landed in New York.

A deadly cloud of spores has already infected and killed the inhabitants of two worlds. Now that plague is heading for Earth, and threatens humans and aliens alike. Can either species be trusted to find the cure?

Geneticist Marianne Jenner is immersed in the desperate race to save humanity, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Siblings Elizabeth and Ryan are strident isolationists who agree only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Marianne’s youngest, Noah, is a loner addicted to a drug that constantly changes his identity. But between the four Jenners, the course of human history will be forever altered.

Earth’s most elite scientists have ten months to prevent human extinction—and not everyone is willing to wait.

This wasn't a bad read, but it didn't excite me with its ideas. Yesterday's Kin focuses on a scientist who has just made a fairly interesting discovery at a minor university. But it doesn't seem like an Earth-shattering discovery until the aliens who have recently come to Earth take notice of it. As the blurb above says, the aliens also reveal that a deadly cloud is floating through space towards Earth. Marianne, the scientist, becomes involved in the scientific effort to save humanity and the story is told in alternating chapters between her point of view and one of her sons'.

I think I would have been more excited by this story if it had taken a "scientific mystery" angle. That's not quite what it did though. The mystery and race to save humanity is one of several threads in the story, not given more urgency that other threads (in terms of how it made me feel, anyway). It seemed to be given equal importance as Marianne's feelings towards her family and her son's ambling journey through life before and after he becomes involved with the aliens. Not to mention the fact that I felt a bit let down my the resolution.

As science fiction, this isn't a bad read, but I wanted more from it. It wasn't actively bad or offensive or anything like that, but it just left me feeling "meh" about it. I would recommend Yesterday's Kin to fans of science fiction, particularly near future SF with biological influences.

4 / 5 stars

First published: September 2014, Tachyon Publications
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley