BOOK REVIEWS
The Protectors War by S.M. Stirling. This is book two of the series on low tech survival after an event renders explosives inoperable. The first one was Dies The Fire. The first book was great, the only down side being the Druid/Celtic mythical bull hockey. I have read it more than once. It is actually better the second time around as you know to skip ahead a few paragraphs whenever the “mystical Mother who dwells in this living tree grant me the power to smite my enemies, so mote it be” crap starts. No one doubts the researching abilities of the author, it is just that sometimes we don’t share his sense of wonder at certain things.
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The second book was also a good read. It was an entertaining book. But it is nowhere near as good of a post-apocalypse book as Dies The Fire was. It is not worthy of a re-read, unless someday you have a few spare days to read the whole series through at once ( I think #3 is already in print ). The whole book is basically a British guy escaping England and showing up in Oregon to meet up with the Bearkillers. British guy knows how to handle chemical weapons stocks, Lord Protector wants the guy to help him use this new weapon. There is no actually war with the Lord Protector, it is just events leading up to it ( one presumes ). Border skirmishes are about it.
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Don’t get me wrong, I did say this was an entertaining read. It is just that it isn’t really a good post-apoc novel. More of a sci-fi one. For one thing the action skips ahead years after the last book. Little detail is given on post collapse living methods, one of the things I really liked about the first book. If you can spare the money, go ahead and read it. But if you can’t, don’t worry too much about it. You aren’t missing anything in your survivalist fiction library.
*
The Collapse by Jeff Stanfield. About 700 pages, but the print is on the large size. The only problem with this book is the price. $25 at Amazon. I was really reluctant to buy this, but my never ending quest to reinvest proceeds from my book sales finally convinced me to give this a try. All the Amazon reviews were positive about the story. They also warned about the huge number of editing errors. And there were, several per page. The author did the same as me obviously. Self editing saves a butt load of money, it just makes for an unfinished product. If he had shrunk the print some and reduced the page numbers and was thus able to charge less for the book I would have been happier.
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But, for a first time author, this was a great story. Unfortunately it is more of a militia type genre than a survivalist one. The only self sufficient character was an old mule farmer. The rest of the characters were the semi-auto and MRE type preppers. Nobody ever ran out of ammo or food. And there were plenty of firefights. But if you go in knowing what kind of story this is ( and are prepared for the spelling/grammar errors ) it is an entertaining book. It is definitely a page turner. It keeps your interest and moves you along quickly.
*
The Chinese and North Koreans smuggle in commando teams to coordinate terror attacks all over the US in small towns, supposedly to magnify panic ( as in, NYC is other people, but if it could happen in Dog Turd Tennessee it could happen to me too ). Then the US nukes China. I personally feel this is improbable. A financial attack is more likely. However, the author is a cop, not a financial professor. And I guess it would make a certain amount of sense, being a way to reduce the population of China before Peak Oil did it.
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Things collapse. Our story characters deal with last minute preps and must fight outlaw motorcycle gangs and then FEMA troops. In the end the regular Army troops fight the FEMA storm troopers but then try to turn the entire US into a military dictatorship. And the book ends with a opening for a sequel. Not a bad story, although at times you feel events get a bit unrealistic. But no matter, a good story of how events could unfold. As I said, the only drawback is the price. $25 is a heck of a lot of money for a entertainment book. For a reference book I would have no problem paying that amount. For fiction it is an extravagance. A luxury. If you only have three months of food in the cupboard, this book is not how you want to be spending your money. However, for the survivalist who has everything…
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2 comments:
I was itching to buy a survival pdf at a very reasonable price but alas where am I to get one ;-P
Two books I would recomend would be 1) ALAS BABYLON and 2)PULLING THROUGH by Dean Ing. Both involve a nuclear war scenario, but many of the problems outside of the radiation (which plays only a minor role in ALAS) are those that might be faced in a collapse/apocalypse situation. For instance, I was surprised that salt was such a dependent quaility.
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