Review: Disappointing Installment
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 12 26, 2012
As soon as I saw this book was available I immediately bought it based on my enjoyment of the first novel and though I only give this book 2*, I will probably stay on the lookout for any possible future installments since there are a few threads that the author has left open that I would like to see how they are resolved.In the acknowledgements section the author points out that the punctuation and grammar are still being worked on (I feel this info should be in the blurb describing the story for possible buyers) so I was prepared for some issues, but not for just how bad it is. Punctuation, grammar, typos; this book has it all, and on almost every single page. In my mind I didn't deduct too much for this, after all I was aware going in that there would be problems. This story only gets 2* because of the story itself.There is very little going on in this story, with practically no story arch to speak of. A foreshadowed attack does occur but it is wrapped up very quickly, which left me wondering what else was supposed to happen. The 'blues' play little to no role throughout the story. There is the part about the Judge and Congressman, but this quickly goes by the wayside. Instead, this story focuses more on the gathering of guns, ammo, and survivors. I found myself getting bored and kept checking to see how much was left to the story.My other issue--and this is the big one--was the way the suicide was portrayed. I don't want to reveal any spoilers, but if a person were to endure what this character did, they would likely spend the rest of their life in some kind of therapy. What I didn't like was the way Bruce was so mad at this character (he was disrespectful of the body, refusing to give it a proper burial, and felt that they had wasted their time and food on this person and should have just left them to die). And while I didn't like the opinion that Bruce held, I was OK with that, because I realize that I'm not going to be in agreement with every opinion of the protagonist of any story. But any character that was in disagreement with said protagonist on this point quickly changed their opinion and agreed with his. I felt the author lost a valuable chance here to show this large group of people having to come together and accept other's opinions and how to deal with possible future scenarios such as this. Instead it became threats and bowing down to the almighty Bruce.In the end, this book read more like a filler book that was just setting up a future book. And I will check for possible future releases from this author, I just hope that he is able to bring more focus to the overall story; one that has an actual arch.