This was a short book, at just over 5 hours – actually, once you get to the end, there is a 10 minute preview of the next book, so not even 5 hours. I usually do not waste credits on book under 8 hours, but I neglected to notice the run time on this one. Looking at the series, I see they’re all very short, with the longest running 5 hours 42 minutes. To be honest, these are too short to waste credits on.

The story was not bad, regarding a large CME impact type of disaster. Decent technical info about solar flares and CMEs, which helps one understand the real world danger they pose. Upon finishing the book and reflecting on the story, there isn’t really much that happened. The author wasted too many words describing irrelevent details and not enough about the actions and other things going on. This had the effect of making the book seem even shorter than it was.

Fairly Political and Somewhat Religious
The book is fairly political. Sometimes, the politicalness was used as appeasement or an excuse to explain away some action, and wasn’t too much of an issue. At first. Later on in the book, the political sniping became more frequent. Whether or not I agree with the political views given, I often feel they get in the way of an otherwise good story, as with this book. Likewise with the religious overtones, which at times seemed as though they were squeezed in as an afterthought, as the points made weren’t very important to the overall story.

Erroneous Facts
There are a few reality errors I found glaring. I realize it’s nitpicking, but Suburbans don’t have trunks; I’m not sure how a (repeated) mistake like that can be made. Also, a CME would not destroy electronics.

The book also contained a lot of very low-level explanations of basic survival and preparedness information, which for me, made for some very dry parts in the story.

At the end of the book, I’m left wondering what happens to the main characters and how the event plays out, so I’m tempted buy the sequels, but not at 5 hours per book. Too short. I’ll be watching for these on sale, otherwise I may not find out what happens.

This was the first time listening to this narrator, who did a respectable job of telling a story. His female voices were pretty weak, though.