World, Writing, Wealth discussion
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Best book on the theme of "world" that you read in 2016?
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I had to check to see if I read this one this year...Radio Hope
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
It is PA and it is book 1 of a series. Set some years after the end of the world event, survivors have coalesced back into some sort of society. Instead of a story about characters facing the end of the world and trying to figure out how to survive, this is one of those where they've already figured out survival and they're dealing with the situation as the new normal.
What I liked about it, was not necessarily the story around the characters, but the society those people created, and the fact that there is no real answer to the inequality that crept back in.
A group of survivors live in a walled city they created for their protection. They have defended their city in the past against the barbarians that want to take what they have, and all around they have established their power and their right to exist.
Unlike what you see on Walking Dead right now where these kinds of societies live in sort of bubbles with other survivors living some distance away, they have people living right outside the city walls. Those who aren't part of their society, those who didn't build their city or defend the walls in the past have set up camps and homes in the countryside just outside their walls. They have come to depend on the city for those goods that are produced within the walls, the medical care they can provide because they do have a doctor, and for the protection having that strong neighbor provides them. But the city depends on those outsiders to scavenge and find what few supplies still exist and hide from the old world.
The society has created an inequality that resembles what we already have. Those on the outside have no rights to what those on the inside have and enjoy. There is a central character banished from the city for believing there should be more equality and that the city should open their walls to the people from the outside and bring them fully into their society. Conversely you have city-dwellers who don't trust the outsiders and see them as people who just want to take what they have worked so hard to build up.
What I loved most about this book is that the issues aren't as clear cut as you see in most books. The author doesn't present a story where one side is right and one side is wrong. It is a very complex issue where both sides have valid concerns. For example the climax of the book involves a new group of barbarians attack the city. The city decides to open their walls and allow the outsiders in to protect them, but instead of joining the fight on the walls, many of the outsiders take advantage of the chaos and go out among the dwellings to steal, affirming the fears many of the city residents have about creating an open-door policy. But then again, it's not as easy as saying all of the outsiders are like that as others do join the fight and help defend the city that treats them as second-class.
It's a complexity within the society that I loved about this book. We debate a lot of issues around here, but just like in society, we tend to take a black-and-white view, and we tend to believe we're right, they're wrong - that there is no way any issue can be examined form the middle or that what is right is actually a combination of the two opposing views.
J.J. wrote: "I had to check to see if I read this one this year...Radio Hope
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
It is PA and it is book 1 of a series. Set some years after the end of the..."
excellent analysis. kind of a feudalistic society w/immigration issues.
Think current events.