The Tundra Passage by K.A. Jarvis

July 23, 2026 By 2 Comments

The Tundra Passage by K.A. Jarvis
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: SciFi/Fantasy, post-apocalyptic
Rated: 5 stars
Review by Rose

A birth certificate hidden in a dead woman’s closet. A father Grace Campbell was never supposed to find.

Grace is a veterinarian and a survivor of a Florida trailer park childhood. She has made self-reliance her religion. When a shoebox reveals the father she was told never existed, a climatologist in the Alaskan wilderness, she boards a bush plane to find the truth.

The journey doesn’t just change her life. It nearly ends it.

As coordinated cyberattacks bring the nation to its knees, Grace’s plane is shot from the sky over the Alaskan tundra. Suddenly, she is a thousand miles from home and responsible for the survivors: an eleven-year-old girl with a fierce heart, a researcher with dangerous secrets, a hiker whose smile feels like a warning, and a wolfdog who has lost everything.

A hundred miles of Arctic wilderness stand between them and safety. Between glacial river surges, a stalking grizzly, and starvation, Grace realizes the greatest threat isn’t the environment.

It is the person standing next to her, someone whose mission has nothing to do with survival and everything to do with the crisis tearing the country apart.

To protect the people she never expected to love, Grace will have to do the one thing she swore she’d never do again: trust someone enough to let them stay.

Perfect for fans of: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, and Where the River Ends by Charles Martin.

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A standalone novel in The After Collection: A series of survival thrillers about resilience, hope, and found family in the aftermath of catastrophe.

This is quite simply one of the best books I’ve read this year, so much so that I finished it in one sitting…staying up a little later than usual because I just did not want to put it down.

Grace is a strong character. She had to be given her childhood, and I really liked her a lot. And when confronted with evidence of previously unknown parentage, she was strong enough to literally face the unknown and traveled to a place diametrically opposed to her home state of Florida…Alaska.

This isn’t just a book about one person’s trip to find out who she is, though. Foreshadows of the upcoming complete grid failure sprinkles through the early part of the book…and leads to the predicament Grace and her fellow travelers find themselves in.

All the characters are well drawn with their own flaws and personalities. My favorite, though, of the additional characters has to be Siku….a true example of strength, love, and faithfulness.

I’m definitely looking forward to going back and reading the other standalone books in this series.

Filed Under: Other, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , ,

If the Sun Spares Us by Brenda Marie Smith

November 30, 2023 By 19 Comments


If the Sun Spares Us by Brenda Marie Smith
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: post-apocalyptic thriller
Rated: 5 stars
Review by Rose

Two years ago, a solar pulse destroyed modern life. Bea Crenshaw organized her starving, suburban neighbors into a farming community. But now Bea’s gone, and her grandchildren must carry her legacy forward.

In the post-apocalyptic pressure cooker of Austin, Texas, 19-year-old Keno and his younger cousins struggle to ensure their community’s survival even as they’re forced to relocate to safer grounds. Northern Lights that don’t belong this far south grow increasingly intense, making Keno fear what harm the sun will cause next.

Even worse, a marauding militia called the Raiders is closing in, led by a deranged woman who preys on teenage boys. Despite Keno’s debilitating flashbacks from a firefight, he and his wife have a new baby to protect. Though Bea is dead, her spirit desperately searches for ways to shield her grandkids. When Raiders target two neighborhood members, the only hope lies in the community’s strength, Keno’s ingenuity, and the family’s fierce love for one another.

This is the third book in the Braving the Light series and picks up after the death of Bea, the family’s grandmother and matriarch who so ably prepared her family for an apocalypse she is sure is coming, even though she does not know how or when. You can read our five-star review of the second book here.

This third, and final, book of the trilogy does not disappoint. Once again, Ms. Smith presents us with a multi-generational story, told from the POVs of Keno, Milo, Mazie, and Bea. They are trying to relocate to a safer location, a move which causes dissension in the original camp. Add to that, they run into a paramilitary group which calls itself Raiders and is run by a deranged woman with a special affinity for luring in teenage boys.

Once again, it’s the characters and their relationships that really make this book. The characters come across as real people, with all their faults and foibles. They are mostly people who would want to sit down and have a cup of tea with.

The situations, also, ring true and is a future I could see all too well coming our way. The whole range of human emotions and human reactions are seen in the books, both good and bad.

I really recommend this series.

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Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Other, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , ,