There is a story thread you can follow along the twisting pathway that is this broody and bizarre post-apocolyptic novel. However, if you are the kind of listener that runs your audio book while driving, cooking, or engaging in mindless tasks, then avoid this purchase. There are entire segments of this story that the listener must replay to determine if we are engaged in present or past tense (always a bad sign in the first hour of listening). Other times, we wonder if the science fiction/fantasy metaphors are part of the novel’s structure, or if we are listening to an author’s prose whose stream of consciousness has run totally amok.
The premise of the book is sound…the Dollar ($) collapses. Then we get the big “and.” For Slattery, the author, his big “and” is to address the crisis by inventing the dream team of anti-heroes to save the day (maybe). To make these misfits more plausible, the author endows them with characteristics better left for bar room braggadocio. And, herein, lies the failure of this novel. It’s all so out there…so far fetched…that the book is just a jumble of loosely connected stories leading to…well, I won’t say because that’s a spoiler. But…whatever man! It certainly is not Heller’s “The Dog Stars.” His post-apocolyptic novel was brilliant, believable, and left us empathetic with it’s characters.
As for the main characters in “Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America,” I could care less about them. Feh!