Saturday 4 August 2018

THE LONG FALL by Logan Keys and Mike Kraus

3 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads



How I discovered this book: Amazon Browse

Genre: Post Apocalyptic, Climate Change, SciFi

This is part one of a 10 or 12 short novella series, about an unspecified time in the future when a company called Cybercorp have fashioned some sort of thermal shade over the planet to stop global warming.  Whether or not that is a ludicrous idea I don't know, not being a scientist, but I'm prepared to suspend disbelief if the story is great.  At first, I thought it was going to be; it starts off in Antartica when everything begins to go horribly wrong and the temperature plummets super-fast, killing off a bunch of scientists in horrendous ways.  Then the story moves to a girl who works on the NY Times trying to get home in artic temperatures, and the nanny of some kids in Kansas who would have taken them trick or treating if it wasn't for the sudden blizzard and hurricanes.  Okay, so there were some editing 'ouches', but the suspense/drama/extreme weather stuff in all the different scenarios was so good that I could live with them.

Alas, it then went from good to not so good to hmmmm.  Bad punctuation, bad formatting, cheesy dialogue and grammar that was not so much lazy as had decided to take a duvet day.  It seemed like the first half had been written with more care, but the second half was still in first draft.  Such a shame; I was looking forward to finding a good new series and this could have been terrific if it had been redrafted a bit more and worked on by people who know their stuff.  I will, however, try one of Mike Kraus's solo books, as I know he is very popular.  Meanwhile, if anyone can recommend some good (and well edited) books of this genre (EMP, climate change, pandemic, zombie and general dystopian/post apoc), please let me know; I've been disappointed too many times recently. 


No comments:

Post a Comment