I just..I’m sorry I can’t. As a storyteller myself I always try to give the benefit of the doubt and be gracious and generous in my critiques, but I just can’t with this one.
To be fair, I only got through chapter 5 or so (I think it was) before I had to turn it off to do something better–anything really–with my time. So the story itself, in it’s concept, could be a good one. I don’t know.
But I couldn’t get past the writing and the attitude of the main character (whose point of view the book is written from). But in just those first few chapters alone, it became clear to me that this was a doomsday prepper fantasy. The terrorists finally attack, and the main character, by virtue of being good at prepping for disaster, becomes a hero.
If you’re into that, great. I personally am not.
Now, I might have given it a chance, as I have learned to be open minded in my consumption of media and literature, and allow new and even opposing opinions into my brain to rattle around, inform me of the world, and give a wider perspective.
Except once again, the attitude of the main character completely turned me off to the point it wasn’t worth my time. As someone who isn’t silly enough to be terrified by every brown person with an Arabic name, the fact that the bad guys are all one color and the good guys are very much all another color, I couldn’t get past it. As someone who also takes the time to learn my female co-workers names and CALL THEM by their names, I couldn’t get past the fact that the writing repeatedly says "John did this, Bob did that, Joe did this, and *the women* did that." Yes, literally. Men were individuals, women were a collective.
Maybe, just maybe, Horton was purposely writing a character who was a walking sphincter with the aim for him to grow into a full-fledged person by the end of the book, but my good faith had already been stretched too thin by that point.
Read at your own risk. Maybe I’m wrong.