post-apocalyptic

One Second After by William R. Forstchen

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Started: 2/12/21
Gave up: 2/14/21

Ugh. Retired military, super-capable, gentlemanly know-it-all has to save his town after an EMP takes out all modern amenities. I have read this book before. I have read better versions of this book. This one feels like a non-writer decided to fictionalize his What To Do In Case Of An EMP report, hoping it would get his point across better. It’s all tell, no show, and Mr. Only I Am Making The Right Decisions is going to be proven right. AND it’s the beginning of a series, so he’s probably going to end up saving the world. I’m sitting this one out.

When We Were Starless by Simone Heller

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Started: 7/27/19
Finished: 7/28/19

For a novelette, it took too long to reel me in.  I considered not finishing it, and come on, it’s a novelette.  I did finish it, and it did get good, but there’s too much left to the imagination after the end.  And I’m not sure I care enough to imagine it.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson

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Started: 7/8/19
Finished: 7/14/19

I was just getting into the swing of things when it ended!  That’s the problem with novellas, I suppose.  Good story, but there’s a lot about the world and their mission that I didn’t completely follow.  I care enough to wish I could find out more, but that also means I’m a little disappointed in it.

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

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Started: 6/1/19
Finished: 6/7/19

I’ve been meaning to read this one for a year, and then it got nominated for a Hugo and I got it in the voter’s packet, so yay for me!  It’s a story about monsters and monsterslayers in a post-apocalyptic US, set on a Navajo reservation, and it’s pretty great.

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman

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Started: 3/1/19
Finished: 3/6/19

This is a post-apocalyptic world where nearly all white people died and the people who live die by the time they’re 20 (of what sounds like the plague), so the world is populated by kids.  The language is all dialect or pidgin, hard to get used to, but you get there.  It’s told in the first person, so that language is all you get.  It’s sometimes hard to remember that the main character is only 15. At other times, it’s painfully obvious and terribly sad that they’re all just children.  I was having trouble deciding if I liked it, or even if I thought it was good, and since I finished it over a week ago and I can’t let it go, I think that’s a yes on both counts (although I’m not crazy about the VERY end).

The Passage by Justin Cronin

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Started: 5/6/18
Finished: 5/13/18

I feel like I’ve read this book before.  The story is too familiar.  It’s The Stand, it’s World War Z with vampires.  It’s about a government experiment that unleashes the apocalypse and then, decades later, how what society is left is dealing with it (and eventually, hopefully, defeating it).  This is the first in a trilogy (something I didn’t know when I started it).  I will admit here that I read the summaries on Wikipedia and Goodreads to see what happens in the other two books rather than read them myself.

Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn

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Started: 1/23/18
Finished: 1/26/18

The premise was interesting – post-apocalyptic world, society determines that overpopulation was one of the causes of collapse, so people have to earn the right to have kids – but it took a while to get to that explanation, and I never felt like it had a point. Also, the writing was ANNOYING. John was reading another of her books at the same time and had similar issues with the writing. I finished it, but it was difficult not to skim through to the end.