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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
best book I've read this year. really excellent supposing about what the next civil war will be about. the main character is great. this would make a great movie
Okay, so the first part of this dragged a little bit for me, and was a little hard to get into it, but I think you should hold on because the more the story develops, the more you see the complications and the murky motivations of these characters, and there's a lot to think about here. Just really, really interesting and not what I was expecting, and yes hard and traumatizing in multiple ways, so be prepared if you read it, but I think it is definitely worth a read.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
I first tried the physical copy of this book a while ago and didn’t finish. Then recently decided to try the audiobook. I just can’t finish it. Once them move from the camp to their house I lose the plot which I was loosely following to begin with. . It just doesn’t hold my attention.
What a well written, provocative read. It was less of a post apocalyptic novel, but more like a realistic possible future of the United States: a second civil war, propelled by an outlawing of fossil fuels, peppered by what it means to fight for your truth and your people. With a pandemic thrown in. When I wasn't pulled in by the well developed characters, I was just plain saddened by the devastation of war, broken ugly people, pain, and unforgiveness. Its a stark and depressing picture of war, but I appreciated the realism.
What presents as another dystopian novel may really be an allegorical indictment of America's arrogant meddling in other countries affairs and the result of refusing to deal with a climate crisis. In Omar El Akkad's dystopian America a civil war rages for decades in the mid and late 21st Century. A Southern rebellion began because the declining petroleum industry was finally banned. Texas and the old South went to war and didn't quite lose. Must of the low lying coast are gone including all of Florida and the coast of Georgia as far inland as Augusta. The Southern economy is sustained by relief ships from a new powerful Middle Eastern empire. The central character is a girl from what is left of Louisiana whose family moves to a refugee camp in Mississippi. Not unlike the Palestinian refugee camps. In a world that goes from bad to worse there is there hope or not? Omar El Akkad has woven a very readable story.
I suspect my rating might be higher had I read the book instead of listening to the audiobook. I often found myself thinking about how I would have read a line differently, especially with the dialogue of the children, who the narrator made sound like idiots to me. Bummer.
The first book this year that I didn't love. I am a sucker for dystopian fiction. But this book was a slog for me. It was hard to empathize with the main character. I just didn't feel scared or that sense of concern or urgency for the character or the causes portrayed in this book. The ideas were there but they weren't properly mined. And the writing just didn't impress me. There was a good kernel of an idea in there, but it didn't draw me in.