Synopsis:
Part alien invasion story, part buddy comedy, and part workplace satire
Would humans really make great pets?
Humans must be silent.
Humans must be obedient.
Humans must be good.
All his life, John has tried to live by those rules. Most days, it’s not too difficult. A hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs of humanity out of the wreckage of a ruined world, John has found himself bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, one of the “good” grays. Sure, Martok is broke, homeless, and borderline manic, but he’s always treated John like an actual person, and sometimes like a friend. It’s a better deal than most humans get.
But when Martok puts John’s bond up as collateral against an abandoned house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for wealthy grays, John learns that there are limits to Martok’s friendship. Soon he finds himself caught between an underworld boss who thinks Martok is something that he very much is not, a girl who was raised by feral humans and has nothing but contempt for pets like John, and Martok himself, whose delusions of grandeur seem to be finally catching up with him.
Also, not for nothing, something in the woods has been killing people.
John has sixty days before Martok’s loan comes due to unravel the mystery of how humans wound up holding the wrong end of the domestication stick and find a way to turn Martok’s half-baked plans into profit enough to buy back his life, all while avoiding getting butchered by feral humans or having his head crushed by an angry gray. Easy peasy, right?
Review:
So, we’re all familiar with the bit from The Simpsons where they’re watching the news on TV, seeing live footage from the space shuttle and an ant crawls over the camera lens. The news anchor has a momentary freak-out, seeing the ant from a strange perspective, and then calmly announces to the audience, “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.” We’ve seen variations on this over the years, especially with the political and social situations here on Earth descending further and further into a hole that we fear we might ever be able to dig out from. Perhaps it’d be better with some alien masters ruling over us because we don’t seem to be doing a great job on our own, some say.
And to that, after reading Edward Ashton’s After the Fall, I’d like to say, “I, for one, welcome our new Gray overlords.”
Ashton, the author of the darkly humorous Mickey 7, is back with his latest After the Fall, which takes the post-apocalyptic story we’re familiar with, and adds an alien overlord twist. What if humans became pets? I’ll admit, there was a significant amount of this story that made me uncomfortable — which is probably something Ashton was intending. The way we treat our animals today is definitely an aspect, but are the cats and dogs in our home sentient? Would you still cuddle with your dog if they actually had thoughts and feelings? How would you treat them if they were just as capable as you or me? So, with that in mind, the more appropriate callback isn’t pets, but rather human slavery.
Which makes this sound all the weirder — I found After the Fall strangely delightful.
John is our human protagonist, bonded to a gray named Martok. The two of them scrape by and we get the sense that Martok is a bit of a loser. John knows it too, but he is loyal, something that is seemingly bred into him. When John’s entire future is put into doubt because of one of Martok’s “get rich quick” schemes, John’s world expands and explodes in ways he never dreamt of, including Martok’s bonding of another human who flips John’s entire worldview. Along the way, we find out some uncomfortable truths about what has actually become of humanity over a century after its fall and what role that John might play in it.
As John’s “master”, we’re meant to feel like Martok is the bad guy, but Ashton brilliantly crafts the story to make you begrudgingly like the alien. John sees something different in Martok and as the first-person POV, we don’t have much choice but to go along with John as the story moves along. It’s a tightly-woven story and just like Mickey 7, I really enjoyed my time in Ashton’s dark-but hopeful futuristic world.
If you like satire and a smattering of dark humor running over your post-apocalyptic alien stories, then After the Fall by Edward Ashton is for you.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
After The Fall by Edward Ashton releases on Feb. 24, 2026.
Leave a Reply