Livre d'Or

Yeah, I can see that would annoy you as much as some other off things annoyed me! I went into the book prepared to accept its premise that there was a real problem growing enough food to sustain the world population. That seems a reasonable starting point for a post-apocalyptic story, and I didn't really pay much attention to how the "Contraction" was supposed to have worked.

I did think it was a bit Michael Crichton school SF, it's not about how cool science is, it's about how scientists are too arrogant and try to meddle with things they shouldn't and this leads to everybody getting devoured by monsters. Not my preferred approach, really, but I'm not completely against technophobic SF if it's otherwise well written.