I’m going to consolidate all 7 books from the Borrowed World Series to this one review (Book 1) because this is where it all began for me. Back in 2014 a friend of mine handed me a SHTF book from a different author whom I won’t speak about because I’m not a huge fan; but they told me I HAD to get into Post Apocalyptic Survival novels ASAP knowing what I’m like. I don’t consider myself a huge reader, but I read my bible. I’ve enjoyed a host of Brad Thor, Tom Clancy, and Louis L’Amour novels over the years. I’m also big on reading How-To manuals, the news and alternate news, but not fiction books. I mean after all, what can you learn right?? So I started reading this paperback from another author and I liked it, I learned a little, but I didn’t love it. About a year or so later my friend was bugging me again and I told him that It was “ok” but I don’t have that much time for reading so he suggested Audible. I moseyed on over to Amazon and started poking around at the book I had and noticed the “See more like this book” or whatever it’s called link below. I stumbled on The Borrowed World by Franklin Horton and noticed it had some really good reviews. After reading the Author summary about this average guy named Jim and an ISIS attack on the power grid, and testing his own preparedness the first two things that came to mind were A) This is applicable and a plausible scenario and B) It sounds like I could learn something from this “fiction” book. So I signed up and did the 1 credit per month and started on my Post Apocalyptic Survival / SHTF novel journey. I’ve since purchase ALL of Franklin’s books on either Audible or paperback.

I don’t know whether to Love Franklin or hate him honestly. I am completely addicted to these books now, they are like crack for me. I chew on my fingernails just waiting for book 2, book 3, book 4, book 5, and praying there is a book 6 – 100. I’m like a dog waiting for the food to drop from the bag when my owner forgot to feed me last night. Seriously it’s so bad yet so good!

Now on to the nuts and bolts of the content. The characters, the story line, the level of detail about the gear, hardware, clothing, packs, tactics, medical applications, off the grid ideas, you name it! Anything you can think of is spoken about in detail in these books. I have a Google Keep notebook FULL of just Franklin Horton ideas. The reason I bring this up first is for the skeptics such as myself who thought that a fiction book is for dreamers. It’s not, I can assure you. This is the necessary catalyst that you need in order to go out and do more of the How-To research that you typically enjoy. It’s the perfect harmonization of dream, vision, information, and how-to wrapped up into easy to read novels. The characters are down to earth, flawed, real, and very relatable. My ONE AND ONLY criticism of this author but this is personal preference and in no way a reflection of his talent. My only complaint is some of the content is very “adult” in nature, MOST of which is necessary in lieu of the circumstance being portrayed. Adult in the sense of language and violence. I’ve been in mining for almost 20 years so I’m in no way offended by it, but my reasoning is; some of these books are just SOOOO dang good I wish I could let my younger kids read them. Again, this is just a personal preference. To be fair Franklin does have his Locker Nine series which I’ve let my teenagers read, they are toned down and also very very good books. But for the most part the Borrowed World series isn’t the kind of book that you would sit down with Tiny Tim and have a father / son book reading session with. A PG / PG-13 version of this book would also be a huge seller. I would buy a ton of them and start handing them out to teenagers like Pez Candy. Kids these days are like “Pez what??” Never mind.

I’ll end with Franklin Horton has a certain unique and distinct style about his writings. The best way I can describe it is he is able to take a large amount of information and detail, and eloquently write it into a story line that is equally easy to understand and leaves you craving more without being bored or overloaded with information. I’ve see authors attempt to do this and they either write a book that is too long or too boring or both. You don’t get any of that with Franklin.

Highly recommend this series!!