Point of View

The novel is told from the first person point-of-view of Rachel, a 28-year-old survivor of the apocalypse. There are frequent references to the fact that Rachel is narrating this story from sometime in the future. She regularly points out moments where she would have acted differently had she had information that came to her later. For example, when Borne is about to leave to fight Mord, he suggests that maybe afterward, he could return to the Balcony Cliffs. “If I could go back,” she thinks, “I would give him permission” (262).

Rachel's distance in time from the story allows for some foreshadowing early on, as she notes that when she discovered Borne, he reminded her of the island where she grew up, before remarking, “If I had ever lived on an island. If that had ever been true” (4). This comment remains enigmatic until the end of...