As my headline says, I gave up. This is a five book box set, and I made it through the first two and into the third when the first-person narrator finally drove me out. But I feel that entitles me to offer a review.
I only made it that far because the author’s set up of the disaster, this is an apocalyptic book, at the least as far as I’ve made it is simply the onset and initial period of the disaster. There are a few oddities that I can’t tell if they’re plot holes yet to be filled, or simply things that the author missed. Ah well, I’ll live.
But why I quit. I simply hate, no, that’s not a strong enough word, the narrator. Since it’s first person, we’re stuck with him. The incredible lack of self-reflection, the massive sense of entitlement and self-pity, the abysmal lack of self-awareness, sorry. I just can’t deal with it anymore. Yeah, dude, your situation is bad. But, hey, you’re alive. And coherent.
He’s also a massive hypocrite. At one point he tears into another character on a vicious tirade about “you have to be strong! And hard! This isn’t the old world!” (paraphrasing, but you get the point.) He then walks off and tries to use his mobile phone to contact either of the two young women he’s in touch with, both of which he barely knows, but that he moons over and wants to set off to ‘rescue”. In other words, exactly what he’s cursing out others for. I might’ve been able to deal with this, but on top of everything to that point, it’s the fact NO ONE calls him out on his obvious BS, I was done. Whether this lack was the author’s intention, or the author is that clueless, I can’t handle this idiot character anymore.
Oh, and did you know, he was abused terribly as a child and youth. Not a spoiler, it comes up in the first few minutes.
And is brought up EVERY few minutes after that. Oh, we’ve gone five minutes without discussing the abuse the narrator suffered as a child? Well, then, we’re going to have an extra long recapitulation of the abuse because you likely forgot all about what you’ve been told over and over. Then we’ll do it again. Given that this has been happening throughout the first two books, and into the third, I don’t think this is going to change.
I wanted to like this book, well, books. But I just can’t. For me, this is reminiscent of my experiences with Mira Grant’s apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic novels. Love the ideas and set ups, but just cannot deal with the main characters.