Salvation Day by Kali Wallace

Salvation Day is yet another book whose good idea/premise is hampered by its poor execution. As the title suggest, much of this novel takes place in one day…this timeline alone makes for a rather restrictive narrative. The story and its characters too are hindered by the fact that most of the events narrated by our respective protagonist take place on the same day. Because of this the scope of this book is quite limited and what had the potential to be an interesting world is narrowed down, so much so that we never truly get the bigger picture of this speculative future.
The range of emotions shows by the various characters is also limited by this one-day setting. They feel different variations of panic and fear, which soon grew tiresome and never allowed for us to see these characters as something other than panicked and not in control of their circumstances.
The story also takes its time to define its setting, that is of providing a solid world-building. Although I am certainly not a fan of ‘info-dumps’, this novel would have benefited from a clearer depiction of its universe as well as the dynamics between this future society.
Overall I found that this book didn’t know what it wanted to be. A story of a rebellion or of a cult or a story in the vein of Event Horizon with dynamics a la Panic Room.
The two narrators blended with one another, which didn’t really make them all that believable as they technically grew up in very differentiating environments and should not share the same vocabulary and or way of thinking.
Perhaps those who haven’t read much speculative fiction might be able to enjoy this more than I did.

My rating: ★★✰✰✰ 2 stars

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