PositiveThe Guardian (UK)In graceful prose, occasionally over-seasoned with similes, and using the present tense, the language of the eternal now, Chen suspends Joan in a liminal space where her historical visceral reality, her agency and the mystery of her unearthly gifts can coexist ... Chen helps the reader suspend disbelief by presenting Joan as a beguiling, fully human mix of wariness and confidence, and fiercely protective of those she loves ... after skilfully avoiding so many pitfalls of writing woman-as-hero, Chen stumbles into the tired trope of woman-as-avenging-angel ... Joan’s pressing fear helps maintain our willingness to believe as she becomes a savant of war. For here at last is the true Joan, glorious in the flower of her strength, leading her men to victory after victory.
Robert Harris
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewAs a novelist, Robert Harris has a gift of immersing readers in an unfamiliar milieu, and thrilling them with the subsequent emotional, physical and ethical challenges faced by the protagonist as he (and it is always he) navigates mounting obstacles to a supposedly routine task — and, in the process, unearths unexpected truths ... Harris seems to be saying that churches, with their enduring stone buildings, would make natural nexus points for the survivors. And this is where readers familiar with ruined-earth novels and their rigorous logical extrapolation might begin to have difficulties ... why, of the vast multicultural population of pre-apocalyptic Britain, only straight, white, able-bodied people appear to have survived ... there is a surprising lack of narrative tension, the internal inconsistencies are confounding and we have guessed the denouement long before it arrives. In the end, even Harris seems to give up, and all fades to black in a shower of cold, wet dirt.
