The Children of Men by P.D. James (1992): A Review

Title: The Children of Men

Author: P.D. James

Publication Year: 1992

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Pages: 241

Source: book

Genre: Science fiction, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic

I am going to keep this short and fast, unlike the book, which was extremely slow despite the blurb on the cover boldly claiming it was “fast-paced”. Dear blurb writer, you lied. Not elegantly. Not subtly. You lied with confidence.

I liked the premise: the end of humanity through sudden global infertility. That is a brilliant, not-so-terrifying idea. Unfortunately, that is also where most of my enthusiasm ended.

What follows is the angry review of a book I somehow did not DNF, and yes, I would like recognition for my endurance. This is science fiction, but there is barely any scientific explanation for why infertility suddenly happens — unless the explanation was hidden somewhere inside the glacial pacing and I simply missed it while losing the will to continue.

Then there are the random groups of people who appear almost out of nowhere. We are suddenly introduced to savagery, near-cannibalism, and social collapse without enough development or warning. I kept waiting for answers, context, or at least a small explanatory breadcrumb. Instead, the book handed me more questions and then walked away very slowly.

And the characters. My goodness, the characters. Can a book contain this many flat characters? Apparently yes. Character development was either absent or so sudden that it felt like emotional whiplash. One character, supposedly our saviour, shows almost no emotion after doing something horrific — as casually as if he had killed a mosquito — and then later becomes briefly emotional. Why? How? Was there a software update? I have questions.

To be fair, the book does have one genuinely strong idea: its portrayal of resistance movements that can become no better than the tyrannies they oppose. That part worked for me. I can understand, especially from real history, how revolutionaries can become liars, manipulators, and even worse versions of the evil they claim to fight. The leader of the revolutionary group embodies that danger well.

I also liked the ending because it leaves us with an unsettling question: will our hero and saviour become another tyrant? That is worth discussing. Life has trained me to be pessimistic, so my answer is yes. And probably worse than the one before him.