It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and We’re Not Fine: Review of Temi Oh’s Not with a Bang

Genevieve Williams Under Review:Not with a Bang. Temi Oh. Saga Press, July 2026. For a story about the end of the world, Temi Oh’s Not with a Bang stays closely focused on a single family: the Mintons, in the final stages of wedding preparations for one of their daughters during the approach of a mysterious celestial object on trajectory to fly by the Earth. This makes it more of a family drama story than a sci-fi thriller, an approach that leverages Oh’s strengths in building characters and their relationships and keeps the story’s emphasis more on their personal outcomes than on the nature and purpose of the object, even when it triggers global disaster. It’s an effective choice, allowing Oh to set up dual through-lines of the family’s journey and that of the object, and generating dramatic tension out of their overlap. This makes for an intimate and affecting story, one where people’s personal problems don’t end just because the world does. Since the object in question isn’t even…