Don’t tell me the lights went out - and not ever address what happened!ĭisclaimer: I don’t think I’m the target audience for this book. That said, the book sat on that topic for too long, without enough of the things that make it a page turner: give me more of a love story (there’s one, but it’s very slow moving and certainly didn’t keep my attention). The concept itself was interesting: people with hand-to-hand combat or food-growing skills certainly fared better than others. The pluses of the book: seeing how people come together to form communities without a structured government or a way to communicate between towns. I’m one of those who can’t put the book down even if it’s bad, and I was mildly interested in the characters for maybe the first half, but then after that it just felt like a chore to read. I found the idea of the story fascinating, but the action of the book was so repetitive that I grew bored with the story easily. But I just don’t have it in me to trudge through 6 other books, or any other series, to find this out. And I heard somewhere that in one of the author’s other books, in a different series, the cause is alluded to. Now, I will add there are other books in the series. Spoiler alert: we never (in this book, anyway) find out why this happened, who did it, and how long this will last. I love a good mystery, so I was all about going along with the characters as they get to the bottom of this.Įxcept, here’s the thing: the book is so caught up in telling the story of survival (which I found greatly interesting for a very, very small portion of the 573-page book), that it doesn’t address the mystery itself to my satisfaction. The main characters have to figure out not only what is happening (is this local, city-wide or everywhere?) but also how long these conditions will last, and also, what or who caused this to happen and why? I loved the concept of it: set in 1998, the story revolves around an incident, some sort of electrical storm, that leaves the world without power … and renders all electronics and firearms useless ( wait, what?).

I was really excited to pick up this book.

Dies the fire book