http://rpuchalsky.blogspot.com/2008/11/adam-roberts-splinter.html ( )

Had I known the premise beforehand and what the story was about, I almost certainly would not have read it.

However, I found it to be surprisingly easy to simply accept the impossible events - and I'm usually into hard SF. The story was engrossing in a way I could not have expected. I wouldn't consider this SF at all; it's speculative fiction. ( )

A short novel inspired by a Jules Verne story known in English as Off On A Comet. Hector travels to the ranch owned by his father, Hector Senior, who has gathered a group of followers under the belief that the earth is about to be hit by an object that will destroy the planet, leaving only a small fragment upon which the ranch is situated. The story, at heart, is about the relationship Hector has with his father, how that has shaped his life, and how it prevents him from fully believing his father’s prophecy, even after events begin to challenge his skepticism.

Given the strong father-son themes of the book, I couldn’t help thinking of Charles Yu’s How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Both are narrated by the adult son struggling to move out of the father’s shadow. For Yu’s protagonist, the father is dead, and it is the emptiness of the father’s last years and the son’s failure to stay close to him that has left him adrift. Hector Junior’s father lives, but there is a lot between him and Hector Senior that makes it hard for him to get close – not least the realisation, in watching Hector Senior as a leader of what is almost a cult, that he knew very little of his father as a man.

More:
http://anotherplace.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/splinter/ ( )

Splinter was a very odd book. If you expected an exciting story of survival, you will be disappointed. Much of this novel is spent inside Hector's head. The author probably intended some obscure message about the relationship between father and son, the sociology of survival groups, the formation of new religions, or the behaviour of humans in the face of the unknown. If so, I could not find it - perhaps because the book was so boring, I struggled to pay attention. Unless you are a real sci-fi fanatic, I wouldn't bother reading this book. ( )