Radio Silence is a short, fun romance that takes place in a rather cozy post-apocalypse. As a stand-alone, it leaves too many un-answered questions, but as the first installment in an on-going series it has potential to be a great semi-apocalyptical series featuring a diverse group of characters.

The story starts grimly, with Arden and her friend John being attacked in the forest (trigger warning for attempted rape that doesn’t go far but includes distressing language). John’s brother saves Arden and John. They were searching for John’s family cabin, and the brother, Gabriel, takes them there and patches them up. The two groups compare backstories.

Arden and John were living in the city when the power went out – and stayed out. No phone service, no computers, no lights, no news. At first people assumed this was a temporary outage and they got along fine, but as time passed with no news of what was happening and why, the city became unstable and John and Arden decided to try to hike to the cabin.

Meanwhile, at the cabin, Gabriel and younger sister Maggie were living with their parents. The parents went to another cabin to check on a family and never came back. Gabriel and Maggie have plenty of provisions but no news. Gabriel wants to go search for his parents but he can’t leave Maggie on her own in case he gets killed, and Arden is worried about her parents but can’t get to them because they are on the other side of the country.

Gabriel is furious with Arden because she had insisted on leading the way in the woods and accidentally led John right into a trap, causing John to get a serious head injury and her to be almost raped and murdered. Arden is furious with herself, but she’s mad at Gabriel too. They hate each other in a way that makes it completely inevitable that they will eventually become a couple despite the near total lack of privacy in the cabin.

As an apocalypse goes, this one is awfully cozy. No one heads out to try to get news. While supplies are always on everyone’s mind, no one makes a move to get more. They have warm clothes and a warm place to live and when Maggie puts on a Casino Night, Arden even shaves her legs (you know, razor blades are going to be a hot commodity soon, Arden).

No one is willing to accept that the disaster is permanent, and they don’t make any moves to protect themselves from it in a permanent way. They just hang out inside all the time, warm and comfy, if stressed and a bit crowded, waiting for something to happen. It’s winter, but they don’t make any plans for spring – they should be planning a garden and discussing possible treks for supplies/news and figuring out how to make their situation sustainable.  They grieve the world they might have lost, but they don’t plan how to survive in the new one.

The inaction of the characters was incredibly frustrating, but because there are other books in the series I’m willing to try the next book to see if things move forward or if the group spends the entire end of civilization playing board games and practicing guitar (which is, admittedly, a nice way to go).  It might go over better with people who don’t read a lot of science fiction, because I was reading it through a lens in which people hunker down for the long haul, and I know that even if your parents have a General Store and your mom is into canning, you’re probably going to run out of food before a new batch of crops comes up if you are feeding four people.

One of the fun things about this book is that it is diverse, and it recognizes and celebrates the diversity of the characters. John is gay and in this book he’s relegated to “Gay Best Friend” but the next book, Signal Boost, is all about John, which YAY. John and his siblings are Korean American and Arden is African American. When he and Arden first meet and decide to be roommates, they have this exchange:

“I’m a complete control freak, so I’ll probably want to handle the utility bills and may pick out your shoes for you, if the mood strikes,” he’d warn me. “But those things aren’t going to happen because I’m gaysian.”

“Well, I sometimes get irrationally angry and I love fried chicken,” I’d replied. “But that’s not because I’m black, it’s because people are annoying and chicken is delicious.”

Seriously, when I die, please put “People are annoying and chicken is delicious” on my tombstone. The family dynamics between John, his siblings, and their parents are both very Korean and completely universal. It was lovely to read a story in which racial and cultural differences are neither belabored nor completely glossed over, and no one is seen in an exotic or fetishized light.

As far as the romance goes, the sex is suitably sexy, but nothing can match the scene in which Gabriel, who is a doctor, gives Arden a massage with Tiger Balm. Sex is great but massages with Tiger Balm are MAGIC.

I like the enemies to friends to lovers dynamic between Gabriel and Arden. Gabriel is hard on everyone but he’s also the closest thing they have to a realist in the family, while Arden brings a level of empathy and emotional sensitivity that Gabriel lacks, especially when dealing with Maggie (she’s a teen). Gabriel forces Arden to toughen up a bit and she forces him to mellow out a little.

This series is off to an OK start but it has a lot of potential to develop into something more complex and carefully thought out. It’s an enjoyable romance, but it’s weak as science fiction, even as science fiction of the “15 minutes into the future” variety. As a romance, it was lovely, and the conflicts between the characters were very well done. But as science fiction, the lack of preparation and response to the external conflicts diminished my opinion of the characters and of the novella as a whole.  I’m giving it a C+, but hoping that the next installments will flesh out the story.