If you look at what the lack of electricity is doing in Venezuela, you can see that no greater catastrophe is needed to destroy civilization, and turn men to beasts. In this case, a Coronal Mass Ejection wipes out all the world’s electricity infrastructure. It will be a decade or more before that can be rebuilt.
This is a non-prepper’s guide to prepping. It involves emergency plans, some basic skills, and an outside-the-box thinking of how to find survival supplies. (I find this part welcome and useful.) This preparation is then fairly-well woven into a story of college kids trying to get home, and what the old folks at home are facing. The problem is that in order to teach us the necessary survival skills, the group of students has a phony student friend who just happens to be a survivor of Sarajevo, and a former fighter for the Mossad! This credibility-stretching cheat brings down the realism with pedantic lectures on hand-to-hand fighting, finding food, and situational awareness.
At the risk of stereotyping, I cannot hear that several of the main characters are Black. I’m not saying they need to sound Scarlet O’Hara-ish, but even Black people have distinguishable voices for Black people. What happens in the narrations is you are startled when someone’s black-ness is mentioned because you’re just not hearing it.
Then the volume ends without conclusion so as to lead into the next book, not really a cliff-hanger, but still unfinished. Books such as One Second After and The Commune manage natural resolutions that satisfactorily wrap up the events in one book, and then open up again in the succeeding volume. This series is really one book split into random volumes for sale.
To my dying day, I will fight for the English language. When I’m gone, y’all can destroy it all you want, but while I have breath, I will speak out. Publishers have a responsibility to the integrity of the language. This story illustrates the breakdown of that duty. There is too much incorrect usage of lie/lay as well as between “John and I” and “John and me.” Publishers need to hire better editors and make more use of them.
Sunfall is, nevertheless, interesting and I will continue to read the series. It’s just not top-drawer material.