Review: 3.5, but no half stars are allowed
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 3, 2011
This story was well written and engaging, just....lonely. Which I guess was the point.The story starts out in the middle of both a blizzard and an unexplained illness (flu-like, but with skin sores). The main character, Kate, watches her husband and neighbors get sick, even as she succumbs to the illness herself, as the blizzard continues to rage outside.Lots of inner discourse and hallucinations, until she begins telepathically communicating with two people, one a little boy in Texas, and another that she calls Ping, who turns out to be someone very unexpected. Eventually, she hooks up with Jack, a doctor who had survived, who has a horrible story of his own.There are very few survivors to this illness, and no outward threats as there are in other PA stories. This story is more about inner demons, and the surivors attempting to navigate their new reality.Months pass in the blink of an eye and the turn of a page, and conflicts emerge.The only explanation of the sickness and resulting death of nearly the entire world population is sketchy at best, but I think that's more because this book is not about the end of the world, it's about this particular group of people.Not a bad read at all, but I wish there was more about the actual illness and other survivors....if there were any, which it doesn't seem there were. This book is a lot different than most PA books, in that there is not some rogue bad guy group out to rape, murder and pillage just because they can, which is a nice change from the norm.