A good start to this post-apocalyptic novel. Set in the west of the USA, specifically Oregon and Idaho, this picks up almost immediately after The Change - something that has suppressed electricity and almost all exothermic reactions - so no guns, explosions or propulsion from fossil fuels. It follows two groups of people as they immediately struggle to find safety and food and adapt to the new conditions. Society quickly goes to anarchy and chaos and they must literally fight to stay alive. The primary characters of Mike Havel and Juniper MacKenzie are excellent. The rest of the series is too. ( )

The characters are well written and mostly sympathetic, although the level of Wiccan background information jammed in there was annoying and tended to throw me out of the story and also make me initially dislike one of the main characters. I'm not anti-witch, just anti bad writing and whiny characters who call on their deity/deities every 5 lines. To be fair, though, Juniper does improve over the novel and while there's just as much Wicca thrown in your face the whole way through it gets easier to tune it out and focus on events.

As an avid D&D player who probably knows too much about various historical weapons, I liked the practicality of the weapons and tactics used. I liked the realism of people getting hurt and dying when they did stupid things. I liked the various societies that formed up around lucky, charismatic leaders, and the ways people tried to resolve the inevitable problems. I liked the focus on farming, planting and harvesting food, and that the people who survived were the ones who realised that they needed to get crops planted so that they'd be able to eat over the winter.

My main problem with the story was suspension of disbelief. It's just too convenient for electricity, engines, gunpowder, internal combustion of all sorts, and even high tech steam engines to all stop working, and yet leave everything else as is. It reads like an SCA or Renfair recreationist's dream scenario: no guns or engines, but we can still have fire and napalm; no electricity, not even batteries, but magnets still work. Steam works, and gases work exactly as they do now, but you simply can't get the pressure up to run a steam engine (that was the last straw for me; I was prepared to accept the no gunpowder rule as a narrative necessity, but that just doesn't make sense at all). I'd have liked the story very much more if it had just flat out said it's magic, or else gone with the global EMP option. The scenario as stated just didn't work for me, and the half-hearted "but I'm no scientist" explanations also didn't work for me. After all, they found people who had the skills & experience to make yew longbows, train horses, and make siege engines, but no one with any idea of how physics works who would talk about it for the reader. Lazy writing.

That said, I enjoyed reading the novel. I've read better examples of the genre, and I'm including the 'onoes, I've fallen into a low tech world with a bit of high tech knowledge' type of story in this same genre, but this wasn't bad. I just wish the premise had been stronger, or at least internally consistent.

If you want a better look at a similar idea, try Fey by Paul Kidd. ( )

The characters are well written and mostly sympathetic, although the level of Wiccan background information jammed in there was annoying and tended to throw me out of the story and also make me initially dislike one of the main characters. I'm not anti-witch, just anti bad writing and whiny characters who call on their deity/deities every 5 lines. To be fair, though, Juniper does improve over the novel and while there's just as much Wicca thrown in your face the whole way through it gets easier to tune it out and focus on events.

As an avid D&D player who probably knows too much about various historical weapons, I liked the practicality of the weapons and tactics used. I liked the realism of people getting hurt and dying when they did stupid things. I liked the various societies that formed up around lucky, charismatic leaders, and the ways people tried to resolve the inevitable problems. I liked the focus on farming, planting and harvesting food, and that the people who survived were the ones who realised that they needed to get crops planted so that they'd be able to eat over the winter.

My main problem with the story was suspension of disbelief. It's just too convenient for electricity, engines, gunpowder, internal combustion of all sorts, and even high tech steam engines to all stop working, and yet leave everything else as is. It reads like an SCA or Renfair recreationist's dream scenario: no guns or engines, but we can still have fire and napalm; no electricity, not even batteries, but magnets still work. Steam works, and gases work exactly as they do now, but you simply can't get the pressure up to run a steam engine (that was the last straw for me; I was prepared to accept the no gunpowder rule as a narrative necessity, but that just doesn't make sense at all). I'd have liked the story very much more if it had just flat out said it's magic, or else gone with the global EMP option. The scenario as stated just didn't work for me, and the half-hearted "but I'm no scientist" explanations also didn't work for me. After all, they found people who had the skills & experience to make yew longbows, train horses, and make siege engines, but no one with any idea of how physics works who would talk about it for the reader. Lazy writing.

That said, I enjoyed reading the novel. I've read better examples of the genre, and I'm including the 'onoes, I've fallen into a low tech world with a bit of high tech knowledge' type of story in this same genre, but this wasn't bad. I just wish the premise had been stronger, or at least internally consistent.

If you want a better look at a similar idea, try Fey by Paul Kidd. ( )

Great novel about a world without power or guns. Some interesting characters, one involved with Wicca, and an ex-Marine. Good story. ( )

Post apocalypse, in the vein of Alas Babylon/One Second After/The Postman. ( )