Although accepting the inevitable ‘Maunder Minimum,’ the main characters of Surrender the Sun refuse to accept mankind’s imminent demise as inevitable. Though dealing with the depravity many survivors exhibited and excused as survival of the most ruthless, Bishop and Mave fought to survive yet maintain their humanity and compassion for other, often weaker, survivors. Unfortunately, many times this presented an ethical dilemma of life-and-death proportions.
Although much of this book held true and typical of doomsday fiction, I was especially intrigued by its empathetic, but not overly sympathetic treatment of main and secondary characters suffering from PTSD due to wartime or from surviving the apocalypse or its more sinister human elements.
Without being overly detailed about preparation or tedious in describing survival tactics, this book concentrates on the human elements-good and evil-and in doing so gave encouragement that moral and physical survival is possible even when surrender to that that cannot be avoided is inevitable.