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By Gertie , Please go nominate books for book club! · 24 posts · 68 views
By Gertie , Please go nominate books for book club! · 24 posts · 68 views
last updated Sep 18, 2025 08:37AM
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August 2025: Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
By Gertie , Please go nominate books for book club! · 24 posts · 37 views
By Gertie , Please go nominate books for book club! · 24 posts · 37 views
last updated Aug 08, 2025 03:48PM
What Members Thought
Dec 27, 2009
Rusty
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
apocalyptic,
read-in-2011
I can understand some of the critiques, but I appreciate this book. When I take the time to analyze it critically, it was not well-written, it was too blunt at times, and a bit redundant. But I appreciate a reminder that modern society is not the be-all, end-all, and that any number of things can knock us on our collective ass.
Also, let me just say, HOLY FRICKING @#%$! Thank you Forstchen, for a protagonist who isn't a flag-burning, hemp-smoking, tree-hugging, firearmaphobic hippie. Those are f ...more
Also, let me just say, HOLY FRICKING @#%$! Thank you Forstchen, for a protagonist who isn't a flag-burning, hemp-smoking, tree-hugging, firearmaphobic hippie. Those are f ...more
This book is basically fantasy/wish fulfilment for a Luddite, Boomer-Silent-Cold-War-Generation, Southern Christian War-Hawk (a LBSCWGSCWH?) . Our hero, John Matherson, is a retired almost-general, now professor at a southern Christian college, widower-father of two teen girls. A nuclear atmospheric explosion is deployed over the US (terrorism? China? North Korea? We're never really know), triggering a nation-wide electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that wipes out all electrical equipment in the US. Wit
...more
Fairlydidactic
I liked this book enough to read it twice, but the second time I remembered the problems I had with it the first time. It's nice to read something that has a different incipient event than your typical post apocalyptic novel, but the author tells you a lot instead of showing you. Also, there's a lot of "lessons" about how unprepared we are for an event of this type, almost after school special. The point of this is not to entertain, but to raise awareness. Also, fairly conservative ...more
I liked this book enough to read it twice, but the second time I remembered the problems I had with it the first time. It's nice to read something that has a different incipient event than your typical post apocalyptic novel, but the author tells you a lot instead of showing you. Also, there's a lot of "lessons" about how unprepared we are for an event of this type, almost after school special. The point of this is not to entertain, but to raise awareness. Also, fairly conservative ...more
4 years later: This book has stayed with me in the years since I first read it. So much so, that I wrote my own EMP based novel this last year and released it in May. There is something so compelling (for me, anyway) about an EMP-based apocalypse scenario. It seems like it could possibly happen, and that's just terrifying.
I re-read it this spring (2014) and though I was still disappointed by the skipped scene, I didn't notice nearly as many editing problems. I'm leaving my first review here, but ...more
I re-read it this spring (2014) and though I was still disappointed by the skipped scene, I didn't notice nearly as many editing problems. I'm leaving my first review here, but ...more
An engrossing post-apocalyptic novel that, refreshingly, starts out with most of the main characters being totally unprepared for the situation, but there's something really irritatingly hypocritical about a main character who insists that he's insulted when someone implies that he's a communist, but who then proceeds to oversee the confiscation of food, automobiles, and medical supplies. Also, I was not a fan of the way the female mayor of the town was portrayed as indecisive and inept and, ult
...more
This was a well researched book. I appreciate the work Mr. Forstchen put into studying the effects of EMP, and the types of problems that a small town would likely run into if all of our modern conveniences suddenly stopped working.
Having said that...
The political message in this book is very heavy handed. I realize the author and his friends believe we are very vulnerable to an attack of this type, but once the point was made, I believe it would have made for a better story to just move on, rat ...more
Having said that...
The political message in this book is very heavy handed. I realize the author and his friends believe we are very vulnerable to an attack of this type, but once the point was made, I believe it would have made for a better story to just move on, rat ...more
I'm torn on how to rate this book. It was an intriguing story, and I would add it to a list of books to recommend to someone interested in post-apoco-lit. It's a different scenario than I have read in the past (though I did recently hear about another one that is similar), and an intriguing, scary, realistic one.
But it is well and truly propaganda. And thinly-veiled, at that. I think a better fiction writer could have written a five-star book with almost the exact plot. But William Forstchen wri ...more
But it is well and truly propaganda. And thinly-veiled, at that. I think a better fiction writer could have written a five-star book with almost the exact plot. But William Forstchen wri ...more
Good story, and apparently it actually COULD happen, but the writing was a bit amateurish, and the characters didn't seem to convey the emotion I would have thought with such an event.
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Apr 21, 2010
Laura
marked it as to-read
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review of another edition
Shelves:
apocalypse-now-and-forever
Sep 10, 2013
Mandy - Reading in the Happi Bat's Nest
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
