Review: Middle Third of Trilogy Sags a Bit
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 15, 2014
Robert Brumm's "Desolate-The Complete Trilogy" is a highly original, well written science fiction action novel. However, the book on this particular Amazon page is not the trilogy but "Desolate 2," which is not a sequel, but, rather, the middle third of what is essentially a complete novel. And as the middle third of a larger work, it has its flaws.Some background may be in order. Brumm originally wrote "Desolate," a novella about an alien creature wreaking havoc on a group of convicts at a remote Antarctic prison camp. Although "Desolate" was a dramatically complete work, at some later date Brumm decided to follow up of the plot threads in the original novella, and the result was "Desolate 2," another novella, and "Desolate 3," a short novel. Read in sequence, the three books form a complete novel."Desolate 2" is the story of Howard Bell, a survivor of the original camp who is taken to safety in South America. Unfortunately, the prisoners in the camp, including Howard, had become infected with an alien disease that causes its victims to go mad and die an agonizing death. For some reason, Howard is immune but a carrier, and once he gets back to civilization, the disease spreads rapidly."Desolate 2" opens with a plane crash in a tropical location with Howard the only survivor. The first person narrative describes his struggles to stay alive in the middle of the jungle and somehow get to someplace with people. In a few chapters that are written in third person, readers learn that the plane was carrying Howard to the CDC (where the authorities hoped to figure out why he was immune) when the pilot became infected and went nuts. Howard learns he is actually in Jamaica, and when he does get back to a city, the scene is something out of a post-Apocalyptic horror tale, with small groups of decent people staying together while other groups of not so nice people try to take advantage of the anarchistic conditions.As an action story, "Desolate 2" works quite well. Brumm is just as gifted in describing the horrors in Jamaica as in the Antarctic, and there is plenty of action.  In addition, Brumm adds enough of the backstory about the prison camp in this book so that readers will understand, but the flashback scenes in the first book that showed how Howard got to the camp are missing. For that reason, any reader who hasn't read the first part of the trilogy will wonder a bit at Howard's motivation (we learned in the first book why he was a very atypical convict), and his character isn't quite as effective as in the first part of the trilogy.The worst problem with "Desolate 2" is the ending. While the first installment was a complete work, this "Desolate 2" clearly is not. Instead, it ends with a very abrupt cliffhanger that probably should have contained a "To Be Continued" sign on it. Anyone buying this book and expecting some resolution will be badly disappointed.Many of the positive reviews of this book are by readers who (like myself) read the first part and, presumably the third as well and are really reviewing the work as a whole. I don't feel that's a fair way to review this book for anyone thinking of buying this particular book by itself. The structure of the book may very well disappoint you. Instead, what I would suggest is that readers buy the entire trilogy (which is actually a single novel). It's a terrific read, you won't feel cheated by the non-ending of this segment, and you'll save some money over buying the three installments separately.