Review: OUTSTANDING SEQUEL!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 25, 2014
In this, W.R.Benton's 2nd installment in his THE FALL OF AMERICA series (Book 2 Fatal Encounters), Author Benton continues the story of former Army man John, his wife Sandra, and their ever-changing band of partisans battling the Russians after the US has succumbed to too much debt, too much corruption, too much welfare state, and frankly just too much of everything in a nation living on borrowed time.John takes up with old pal Tom - another former soldier - and they, along with a mixture of veterans and like minded civilians take up arms against an occupying force of Russian troops in hopes of one day reconstituting the late great USA. Along the way they have varied success, some failures, but all in all manage to eak out some sort of existence in the harsh Louisiana back country while fighting for their their lives.W.R. Benton appears to be a far more accomplished author than many in the post-apocalyptic genre, as his novels tend to read a bit better, though the grammatical errors and lack of editing which seems to plague the genre is still present - just not as prevalent. Storyline & character development are strong, as are knowledge of military terminology, equipment & weaponry - though I have noticed an occasional mis-step, but nothing glaring. All in all an outstanding series with believable characters doing believable things during an all too believable scenario. And, as mentioned in my review for book one, for once not everyone present has an AR-15 at the ready, along with a vast stockpile of food, water, supplies & ammo as all too often seems to be the case in other such novels. And this, I believe, aids in making this one a bit more believable.Worst thing I can say about this book is that it ended all too soon - and now I have to wait for the next one.