If Tomorrow Comes: Book 2 of the Yesterday’s Kin Trilogy

If Tomorrow Comes is the second entry in Nancy Kress’s Yesterday’s Kin trilogy. The events of the second book pick up shortly after Tomorrow’s Kin, the first book in the series. After suffering losses, the Earthlings are keen to learn more about the alien race from planet Kindred that visited Earth. For that, the United States government built a ship from the technology the aliens left behind specifically for the purpose of visiting Kindred. They also assembled a team of politicians, scientists, and military personnel in order to study the world of Kindred. After crash landing on Kindred, the delegation led by the protagonist, Dr. Marianne Jenner, discovers that during the journey to Kindred, they fell into a wormhole that disrupted the time-space continuum. As a result, the Earthlings find Kindred and its technology vastly different from what its inhabitants described in the first book. Moreover, the same plague that affected Earth in the first novel now threatens Kindred. Now Dr Jenner and her team must ensure the survival of her group as well as that of the alien race.

If Tomorrow Comes continues the first novel’s character development. The author does a great job of world-building as well and describes in detail the world of Kindred as well as its inhabitants and how it compares to Earth. Kindred’s culture is a matriarchy, and they are very big on the ecology. The central themes of the book are heroism, sacrifice, and free will.

I really enjoyed reading both novels of the trilogy. If Tomorrow Comes is definitely not a stand-alone novel. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to read Tomorrow’s Kin, the first book in the trilogy, in order to understand the events of the second novel.