Review: Beautifully written
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 12, 2014
I love novels that start in a foreign place, and through the detailed descriptions, we slowly learn exactly where the characters are and how they ended up there.This book started out so beautifully. We are in the middle of a destroyed planet Earth, but we don't know why. There's no battle scene, or love scene, or dying scene. There's just the main character (Shep) and his thoughts. The author did a great job of luring me into this story with the detailed descriptions of the canned food, the old books, and Shep's disheveled appearance. What happened? Where are we? I wanted to know so badly.The scene where the trio shows up, we start to see a little bit of Shep's softer side as he sees something innocent in the eyes of the young girl, Antigone. As he kindly takes her in, he learns that she is on her way to "paradise" to find her brother. The reader goes along for the journey and it's a beautiful one. The development of the characters, with the use of flashback, is done so well. Sometimes flashbacks can be hard to fit into a story without losing the reader, but Kilroy nails them. They really enrich this tale.What I really loved about this book is that the author made the story believable. I kept thinking, "Wow, what if this does happen? What if one day there's no more technology?" I think we are starting to finally realize how ridiculously reliant we are on our computers, phones, TVs etc. This topic is no longer ignored by the mainstream, with two of the most popular TV shows, Revolution and The Walking Dead, using story lines about this subject.In conclusion, Nine Meals really made me think about the future of our planet. The writing was clever, thoughtful, and even humorous at times.  I can't wait to read more novels by Mike Kilroy.