Point of View

The point of view of The Only Ones is third-person, but there is a firm main character in Martin Maple. The novel is exclusively from his point of view, and the third-person narration offers an insight into his mind that none of the other characters get. Martin acts at first as a sort of audience surrogate, as he comes to the society of Xibalba not understanding exactly what it is or how it came to be at first, but he gradually learns as the people around him teach him. He asks the same sorts of questions that a reader may ask if confronted with such a strange society after a world-altering event like the Day. His initial naivete is important in that it helps him naturally establish the parameters of this new world that he finds himself in.

The third-person narration also serves to accentuate...