A great dystopian novel involves interesting human characters facing the challenges of the dystopian environment. This book is not that. The protagonist seems to be a self centered, misogynistic, bigoted, paranoid, Ahole who had been planning for (and perhaps hoping for) dystopia to descend. The prose are poor, the characters one dimensional, and the story predictable and plodding. He would clearly shoot any looters dead, but easily excuses his own looting. Drug addicts are “soulless”. Spanish speakers untrustworthy and he is always right. The books decline from one to three.
A key to understanding the author’s perspective is he believes for every good person, there is at least one balancing bad person.
If this were simply a short guide to ideas for disaster preparedness it would have been somewhat useful. Unlike some prepper stories, many of the details of prepping were reasonable (but with a severe over emphasis on guns and ammo). He keeps a plethora of guns and several hundred thousand rounds of ammo in his basement. His love of guns is extreme.
I did finish this compilation of books one to three of the series, but will certainly not go on, nor reread this volume again.
The narration was good and did all it could to improve the characterizations.