quote:
ik dacht, interessant, tot ik de reviews op Amazon.co.uk las
Dear, oh dear . . .
The best advice about this book - as another reviewer here has said - is don't read this unless you are an ex-military, right-wing, Presbyterian Republican American. In fact, if you're not American full stop (sorry, should that be 'period'?) please don't read it.
The premise is great, but the book is just so badly written as to be at times unreadable.
For a rather more cynical British reader like me, the worst crime the author commits is to wallow in the worst excesses of hand-on-heart, quivering-lipped, flag-saluting, God Bless American stomach-churning claptrap you will ever read. Over and over and over again....
It is painful to read at times.
Indeed, I thought I might need a sick bucket at several points, but I'd paid for this rubbish so I was going to finish it . . .
For instance, we get the usual cliched scene of an honest, church-going and pure as 'mom's apple pie' crowd bursting into the 'Star Spangled Banner' not just once, but twice in this never-ending pile of dog-dirt. Good grief.
Indeed, the book is so full of these right-wing cliches it could virtually be a field manual - all the good guys are ex-military ("Sir, thank you for your service") while naturally all the bad guys are tattoo-covered, dope-smoking ne'er-do-wells who've never served their country and who shame the American flag just by being alive and breathing. Are there people out there who really believe that this is how the world works?
And just like another reviewer also pointed out, the plot is virtually a carbon copy of the excellent 1977 novel by Niven and Pournelle.
Shame on you Mr Forstchen . . . I have to assume, therefore, that your other novels are also bare-faced plagiarism as well?
I love 'end of the world' novels, but hated the naked Republican jingoism of this one.
More so, perhaps, than the terrible, cliched, predictable and politically and religiously sentimentalised writing. It really is awful . . .
For those of us lucky to live over here on the eastern side of the Atlantic (where all the natural disasters so beloved of Hollywood never seem to happen), a considerably better alternative novel (set in post-apocalyptic Britain) plays out much the same scenario, but with better characters, better writing, better dialogue, and without a single star-spangled hint of any of the excessive right-wing Christian-American bullshit that utterly ruins this already desperately poor book.
It's called "Last Light" by Alex Scarrow (brother of Simon Scarrow) and is an excellent read.
For your own sake, buy it, or Niven and Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer", or in fact any other novel on Earth, rather than this utter garbage.
Don't say you weren't warned!