Musing Monday's, September 8, 2014

TC is in the sun musing about the chipmunk she sees out the window.
Hopefully that is all she does.  So far this month she has presented me
 with two chipmunks - one alive and one dead but both in my bedroom.

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week.…Musing Mondays is sponsored by Should Be Reading.

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! 
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to talk.'

I have different reasons for reading different authors.  For some it is

the story, for some the characters and for other the plot.  With Nancy Kress it is trying to guess where she is going with the story line.  Most of the time I just plain guess wrong.  Just when I think I know what is happening she throws a complete curve ball so I was looking for that to happen when I started her latest book, Yesterday’sKin.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

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.

Yesterday’s Kin chronicles the arrival of the aliens and the reactions of the humans before the arrival of the spore cloud and Kress keeps the tension up while the surprises keep coming.

Sounds like a typical end of the world story doesn’t it.  Well it is in some ways but something in that blurb is a lie.  A lie that does not show up until the very end.  The story is told from Marianne and Noah’s point of view alternating between the two.  Elizabeth and Ryan play an important part as side characters. Both Marianne and Noah have life changing experiences as a result of the alien arrival.

And this time did Kress fool me?  Not entirely!  I suspected the big lie before it was revealed. If you like guessing games in the books you read give Nancy Kress a try.  You will be letting yourself in for some extraordinarily well-written books full of surprises.