I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! So lets catch up with some reviews from January!
When an EMP attack hits the United States and knocks down the entire power grid, two brothers named Randall and Thomas find themselves caught in the middle of the chaos and separated from their loved ones. Making their way to their grandparents' lake cabin in the north, where they believe they can find the rest of their family, things take a turn for the worst after a violent encounter with members from a large and organized survivalist community called The Compound, led by a brutal leader named Lewis Butler who controls the community with an iron fist. After another turn of events that leaves Thomas captured and sent into Butler's hands, Randall must race against time to locate their family and lead a harrowing rescue mission to save his brother before it's too late.
Randall, Thomas and family are not exactly the sharpest tools in the box for supposed preppers. Their designated bug out location is 120 miles away from where they all live-a cabin by a lake. They only have a week of supplies left at the bug out location when Randall gets there, no winter clothing, no working vehicles and a lack of gun power. None of the family have a vehicle that works after an EMP to get them the 120 miles to the cabin so the brothers have to go on foot and leave all their supplies behind. That is just dreadful planning! Randall is a known prepper, blogger and writer online yet he fails to know anything about a prepper compound near his cabin that has 2000 people and tried to recruit his family. He knows even less than Jon Snow...
The decisions that Randall takes are pretty dumb. First he goes outside to the street after the EMP hits only to decide it's safer to stay indoors seconds later. He waits a full 24 hours to go and find his parents who failed to mention going to the cabin that week. He makes no attempt to scout his neighbourhood for an old vehicle to get his supplies to the cabin. When he is hunting food, his brother stands aimlessly beside him and lets three armed men sneak up on them. He forgets to check his radio for news. He should have avoided the abandoned homes and kept moving, a mistake that got Thomas captured. He gets ambushed every time he sets foot outdoors and he seems to want to talk rather than shoot the bad guys. The bad guys are poor preppers too if a small group of people like Randall's can break into The Compound. I also didn't like the jumping back and forward in time between the events now and when the EMP happened. I like a cohesive flow rather than jumping around. I decided to read part two because it was also short and the author is a decent writer in spite of the dumb things happening in the plot.
Read January 2020
2.5 stars.
2) Nick Williams-The Will To SurviveAfter successfully rescuing Thomas from the clutches of Lewis Butler and the Compound, the Parker family is reunited but now face a new threat: they're running critically low on supplies and need to replenish themselves quickly if they are to survive in the post-EMP world much longer. Randall volunteers to lead a harrowing supply run for the family, but a chance encounter with a rogue and unpredictable gang in the middle of the woods throws the success of the mission into serious question. Meanwhile, Butler and his radical militia begin hunting for the Parkers throughout the countryside with no intent of showing any mercy. It's going to take every ounce of skill and courage for Randall, Thomas, and their family to get the supplies they need while evading Butler's forces in order to stay alive.
This book should be called an exercise in stupidity as Randall's hair brained schemes continue. Yes he now realises that there is not enough food, guns and warm clothes to see them through winter as the cabin is totally unstocked. Now he wants to use the stolen vehicle to drive back to their homes to get all the supplies they left behind. Perhaps with 2000 people baying for their blood they should have considered a full bug out as a group rather than split up again or disguised the stolen vehicle. Randall manages to get ambushed by Joe's starving group and is forced to make a deal. Despite not trusting the two people Joe sends with them to gather the supplies, Randall manages to get ambushed by the crazy woman anyway and needs help to get out of trouble. He then lets Joe take him hostage and hands over half the precious supplies to honour the deal that Alex broke!!! Get a brain cell man! He is such an idiot!
The stupid decisions from book one multiply in this book and the bad guys in the two groups get even dafter in their behaviour. The dumb local people are not much better and most of the characters grated on my nerves. The MC's lurch from one crisis to another and make all the same mistakes multiple times without learning anything. If the author took time to pad out the story and put less tell in it and had proper sensible preppers, this could have been a great little series. Instead we get the abrupt serial novel version which feels rushed and underdeveloped with frustrating characters that drive me crazy. I'm not going to continue with the series.
Read January 2020
2.5 stars.
Roy and Josie are a survivalist couple and parents to ten year old daughter, Alex, when the EMP knocks down the entire power grid and sends America back to the Stone Ages in an instant. Well stockpiled and supplied on their homestead in the countryside, the family seems ready and well-prepared to outlast the aftermath of the EMP attack. But things change during a home invasion that results in Roy shooting one of the intruders, the brother to the leader of an armed and dangerous ex-prison gang scavenging for supplies and preying on the innocent. Vowing revenge and in desperate need of the family's stockpile, the gang prepares to launch a coordinated attack on the homestead. Suddenly, Roy, Josie, and Alex are faced with a critical decision: do they leave their home and abandon their stockpile with it, or do they stay as a family and defend what's theirs?
Oh man if there is one thing I HATE in a book it is where the prepper's wife is a whiny, ungrateful and pointless bitch! Roy is former military and is concerned that his is the only family left for miles, worried about what it means. Despite his worries about bad people, Josie lets their sick diabetic ten year old wander around the fences at night on her own and the silly kid forgets to lock the door, leading to a home invasion.Roy is mad at Josie and Alex but I didn't see him checking the doors and windows before going to bed either! Josie then gets upset about all those nasty traps for the bad guys, she freaks when Roy kills intruders and wails that they must go and help the poor injured men. Oh shut up you silly cow! Is she not aware of what these men will do to her and her daughter if Roy fails to stop them? She is appalling.
Again, the bad guys are a mob of idiots but of course you aren't meant to like them. Ben the MC amongst them it just a really pathetic worm and I can't stand him and his whining. The irony is that I like the way the author actually writes and describes the situations but I'm finding his characters each time to be too dumb and annoying to be any kind of preppers. I can't read any more about Josie or Ben so I won't be reading on with the series.
Read January 2020
2 stars.
4) Godsby Jim-Preppers of the ApocalypseAn EMP has blasted America and sent the country back a hundred years. The power has gone and chaos is everywhere, and only the most resourceful people will survive. One man is two hundred miles from home and speaking to his wife. She tells him there is an intruder in the house, but before he can help her, his phone dies. Then his car won't start. Pretty soon he realizes that the power is gone everywhere, and getting back home isn't going to be so easy.
Ash has been going around from town to town, persuading innocent people to put their savings into his non existant scemes so he can steal all their money. He is trying to get out of town and talking to his wife on the phone when the EMP hits. Stranded, he has to go back to town and beg for their help. Ash is one of the most pathetic and nasty characters I've seen in these prepper books. His reason for the theft is to pay for his wife to have IVF and thinks he is not really that bad a guy. Really? I think he's a worm and no attempts by the author to have Ash pitch in and make up for what he did makes me warm to him in any way.
Ellie the cop is quite an obnoxious woman with her stupid runaway tearaway son who keeps being talked about but is never seen, even when they are rescuing him, which is a bit weird. They team up with prepper Tony and military reject Chad to go on a mission to see if the nuclear plant is approaching meltdown. I didn't really care that much about Ash or Georgia and most of the people we come across. This was ok but nothing special.
Read January 2020
2 stars.
In part 2 our group or survivors split up. Ash, Sheriff Ellie and army deserter Chad try to leave Pasture Down and head toward the city. Tensions are already high, as Ellie hates Ash for what he did to the town, and Chad seems to have his own problems. They soon find that a simple journey is turned dangerous in a post-EMP America. They must learn to battle nature and other people as the world descends further into chaos, but Ash won't let anything stop him from getting back to his wife. He needs to remember his long-lost survival skills if he is to make it in a post-apocalyptic country.
To be honest, I only read part 2 because I had downloaded it along with part one. I wouldn't say there was anything wrong with the writing or author style as such, but this just didn't appeal to me. Frankly I don't like Ash or Ellie or care much about Georgia and what happened to her though I do like Chad. It is things like the nuclear meltdown that bother me. They go on the mission, find it is in meltdown and then all go to Tony's prepper farm nearby which is to be their new base when Ash finds Georgia. You guys are setting up just outside the town with the nuclear power plant that is going to be spewing radiation soon? Really?
The road trip is not the most exciting trip with Ellie's constant bitching, Ash becoming super prepper and supplies running out way ahead of time. How they intend to get back to Tony is anyone's guess and to be honest I don't care enough to find out personally.
Read January 2020
2 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment