This is the second book from Walter I've read (and the second I'm reviewing for Strange Horizons - review to come) and I like it as much as I liked the first. In some ways the books are similar - apocalypse comes to Australia and people have to cope. In this book, however, it's not a long slow drought that's the culprit. Giant, freakish monsters are hauling themselves out of sea and going on the rampage, and there's genuinely nothing that can be done about it. The armed forces try, scientists try, but humanity is enormously overmatched and going down. I love that the book makes no bones about this. There's no last minute magic save, it's extermination all the way. Yet what I enjoy more - and what seems to be a feature of Walter's work, what I've read of it anyway - is that it's filled with decent people doing the best that they can for themselves and for each other. Apocalypse is a genre that often wallows in the worst of humanity - we're running out of people and resources, let's resort to evil acts to hoard and reproduce! - but he steadily refuses to fall into this particular pit of misery, preferring to present people as their better selves.

I so enjoy that.