World Coming Apart
This book’s title seems peculiar. As this is the first book of the Dark Nation series, everybody involved is being dropped right into anarchy! Nobody’s escaping it quite yet! If you’ve read any post-EMP books by this author, you will be familiar with her formula. I don’t say “formula” as if it’s a bad thing, because this author is skilled. She takes a decent amount of time at the start of the book to set up all the main characters and their scenarios. As always in these books, we don’t just follow one group of people as they’re trying to navigate their post-EMP world. Instead, the book follows several in different locations, with some connections between them. Compared to other books by this author, much time is spent at the beginning of the book showing the world as it was before the EMP happens. I don’t recall prior series spending quite so much time setting up the pre-EMP world. But I liked how we see the characters’ lives before disaster struck.
As a former addiction nurse, I have a quibble. One character is a woman who suffered from opioid addiction after she was injured. In the book, she struggles with whether to take some of her leftover pills, and at one point, she decides to take some. The character mentions the “sweet release” it gives her. It doesn’t quite work that way. People who have battled with opioid addiction don’t continue to take it for the initial “sweet release” it gave them when they first started using. Rather, they take it to chase away the bad feelings they have when they’re addicted and don’t use. Opioid addiction is complex, having both physical and psychological components. It’s hard to say, given how much time had lapsed before her relapse, if she would still be feeling poorly physically because of her addiction, but at that point, she wouldn’t get any physical “sweet release.” And also, there is the very real danger of overdose if people do relapse, as any length of time away from their substance will decrease their tolerance, making it so that if they use at their prior level, they will be more likely to have an overdose. That actually could be quite a dramatic moment in a book like this. So if the author ever chooses to go down the opioid addiction road with a character again, she could consider going that route.
This book is full of action once the EMP strikes. A group of children is in particular peril. They were going on a field trip to the local prison for the Scared Straight program. Essentially, they are locked in with the prisoners once things go down! They’ve got a fantastic teacher and a former military bus driver who protect them. I felt a little frustrated with the teacher at some points, especially when she endangered four children to rescue one. I understood her rationale, of course, but seeing what happened next to the children was hard to swallow. One mildly annoying thing I’ve noticed in all these post-EMP books by this author is that she has things go bad rather quickly. I understand that from a storytelling standpoint, but I’d hate to think that if an event like this really happened, we would all descend into such lawlessness, anarchy, and cruelty to others so quickly. I’ve already got the next book queued up and ready to listen to. I’m curious to see what happens next to all the groups of people.