The sample sounded intriguing enough, not great literature, but seemed to promise an imaginative story of a near future dystopia or apocalypse. Wrong.

This has more cliches than you can shake a stick at. It’s a badly written gun hugger and prepper fantasy with more lead flying than snowflakes in a blizzard. The storylines have more holes than Swiss cheese, and the timeline allows multiple gunfights a day, while also chopping wood and helping to guard the local penitentiary, harvesting crops, so each day seemingly lasting at least a week. Even though they spend half of each day “scanning the treeline”, they almost to never see their enemies first. The chaotic gun battles start when the bad guy snipers shoot first and always miss. Then minor characters are allowed to tragically perish, and major characters get shot “through & through” but recover in a day or two. They are long days for sure.

The heroine’s secret love interest is a guy who is often described as smelling bad.. His feet stink up the room, requiring all to scrunch their nose, and even pinch them frequently. And she even has a rival for his affection.

Some technology conveniently works for the protagonists, who also rarely miss a kill shot, and who routinely pull veritable rabbits out of their backpacks. They always have plenty of first aid supplies, flash bang grenades, telescoping mirrors, M80 firecrackers, and energy bars. Most of their vehicles work, but pretty much nobody else’s does.

The parties keep track of each other across the country when all other forms of communication are fried. through ham radio operators, who’s equipment works, and always miraculously know all the details of the exact missing people they are hoping to hear about. Everybody always has their lips “curling” (100 times?) or a “big grin spreading”. They widen their eyes a lot too. Left turns and right turns and highway numbers are elaborately described. “Scanning the tree line” is a constant activity.it’d unbelievably there’s no accidental discharges or friendly fire, because they’re always pointing their guns at each other ready to pull the trigger,before they recognize the other person as their literal mother,friend, cousin, etc

I will say he had a number of dogs participating in the story, and enjoyed that despite the cliche behavior of said dogs.