Not my favorite. 2/5. Maybe 3/5. To start, the prologue. It should not have been titled “prologue.” It was chapter 1. There was absolutely no reason for it to be called a prologue. Same with the epilogue. They were part of the story. This is a superficial thing to complain about as it really doesn’t really affect the book, but it bugs me.
Next, the writing. It clearly didn’t have a professional editor go over it. Numerous typos and mistakes that should have been caught. It felt almost like I was reading a first draft. And that’s just the beginning. He split up a single character’s dialogue over multiple paragraphs when he really shouldn’t have, which confused me during every conversation as I tried to figure out who was talking. He was also really bad about not using names when he should have. He’d use ‘he’ throughout a scene, but have multiple men and it often wasn’t clear which one he was referring to.
The tone felt a bit confused at times as well. Sometimes it felt very lighthearted, which didn’t match what was happening, which can sometimes work, but it didn’t this time. Sometimes the narration was dark, but the dialogue was joking, and they didn’t blend well. The dialogue also often felt forced and out of place.
His use of POV characters was sloppy as well. He followed a single character most of the time, but sometimes would be following him, then suddenly we’re witnessing a conversation that he had left. Then we’re following another character with no clear indication that he made a switch, which would leave me confused for a moment. There were a couple of times that he switched POV characters completely and obviously, but the switch served no purpose and the story wouldn’t have changed if he had left out that chapter and let that character disappear again without putting him so much into the spotlight first.
The story itself wasn’t too bad. A bit slow. It had very few exciting or even interesting moments. Most of the book was setting up a camp after the apocalypse, which itself wasn’t even exciting. Most of it was common sense and stuff we’ve seen happen a hundred times at the beginnings of stories. And that was the whole book. It did get exciting at the end. The very end. There was no resolution. I understand that it is the start of a series, but there should still be resolution. Every book in the series should complete the story arc, not end at the top just for the sake of a cliffhanger. There has to be resolution after the climax. This story ended practically in the middle of the climax.
It wasn’t all bad though. I did like the characters by the end (though at first I couldn’t care less about them), and each character was unique. The story did have some good points. There was the occasional idea that was unique from other post-apocalyptic stories and it was interesting seeing so much detail going into the setup of the new society, even if it did get boring.
So yeah, not real great, but not horrible. I complain more than I praise because I think more about what’s wrong than what’s right while I read. That’s mainly because I’m focusing so much on figuring out what not to do in my writing and it’s easier to point out what’s wrong. Someone who isn’t a writer may not find issue with as much as I have. But I wasn’t a huge fan. I may read the rest of the series, but probably not. I have a new stack of freshly obtained books that I’m more interested in to read.
