Review: Meh.  It's "77 Days in September" on a river.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 3, 2014
This book follows a common prepper book formula:Super EMP hits (caused by a CME in this case), wiping out the power grid and all semiconductors.  The heroes need to find a way home, hundreds of miles, to their families.  There are ton of books in this space: Going Home, 77 Days in September, The Wayward Journey, etc.  The best of these, in my view, was 77 Days in September.  This one is different in that the chosen means of transportation is rafts, which are used to float down the Missouri river.The book follows the recipe common to all the "get home after the EMP books": the heroes float from one gun battle with bad guys to the next, occaisionally meeting good people along the way.What I didn't like about the book was the treatment of Richard.  Richard is portrayed as an unpleasant, lazy, fat-and-out-of-shape ass who needs to be cared for by Dylan and Kevin: two strapping, steely eyed men who are essentially the same paper thin character.  Richard is nothing more than a cartoon character.  I don't understand what point he serves.  Usually, an author will introduce a character like that whose ineptness will introduce some drama (i.e., the reader is waiting for him to betray the heroes or get them killed), or he is there to provide a story of redemption.  The author really missed an opportunity to do something interesting with Richard.  Instead, he just gets to be fat and unpleasant for 40% of the book before the authors unceromiously kill him off - again for no reason.The landscape also does not participate in the story.  This could have been a river story about a trip on the Missouri - the same river traversed by Louis and Clark (albeit now tamed by many, many dams).  There is some spectacular scenery along that river, but the author doesn't, or can't, describe it or tell us how the characters interact with it.There's nothing new here.