I am very interested in the basic scenario of post EMP attack survival, and expected to at least be entertained. But as far as I got with the story, it was seriously undermined by the authors inability to write dialogue, develop characters or even describe scenes.
This reads more as a script than a book. Everything is stated bluntly, with minimal, functional detail. Like one writes when on first learns to write in the primary school. For instance, instead of describing the situation as how it would appear under a certain emotion, the writer states the feeling of the character amongst the listed main facts of the situation. It is as if the writer expects someone to stage and act his story alive, and add all the missing dimensions to it. But as far as I know, this is supposed to be an independent work of fiction. A fiction writer is expected to breath life into his story himself, not to wait someone to buy the filming rights. He should make the readers feel like they are living the story, experiencing things that they have not actually lived. That did not happen with this book. I’ve read cookbooks that were more emotionally gripping. This reminds me very much of the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer – this just is written for dudes.
Back to the story, there is an immense contrast between the how problematic the situation is told to be, and how unproblematically the characters acted with each other. Parents are divorced, kids are separated from each other to different states, the dad’s super busy at work, the kid’s going through all the teenage crap, and on the top of it all, the whole country gets nuked. I would have expected some tension in the book even before the nukes, let alone after it, but none exists: everything is peachy. The book lacks tension and dimension, and gets very boring very soon. Not unlike the one Twilight book that I started but didn’t finish. Just like this one.
Edit: I listened to this as an audiobook. While reader gets rather annoying too, seen the material he’s working with, I find it hard to judge him for that. Perhaps it just results from him trying to make the writer’s tepid narration feel more alive.