A Tidy Armageddon

Panhuyzen (The Sky Manifest) explores some fascinating ideas in this apocalyptic tale of Canadian soldiers trekking through a radically altered North American landscape, but gets bogged down in mundane details. Sgt. Elisabeth Sharpcot is mysteriously ordered to take her section of soldiers—eight men and women, including herself—into an underground bunker. When they emerge three weeks later, the world as they knew it is gone. In its place, all of humanity’s goods and detritus have been sorted by type into nine-story-tall blocks by some mysterious force. As the soldiers traverse the grid made up by this uncanny assemblage and search for other human survivors and answers, the characters’ gripping internal and external struggles are interrupted by lists of the subcategories of goods found in each block (“The collection included plain brown tubes, plus many branded Sonotube, Bomix, Formatube, Newform, Tubbox, Quik-Tube, Handiforms, and Caraustar EASY-POUR”), which quickly becomes tiresome, particularly as the journey grows increasingly bleak and questions remain unanswered. Readers will struggle to get through this one. (Apr.)