Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book isn't very good. Not exactly the nicest thing to say about a book that someone's spent alot of time and effort on, but in some cases it's the truth...this is definitely one of those cases. The only actual reason that I can see for buying this book is if you have a library dedicated to 'Survival Fiction' and you simply have to buy one of every book in this genre that comes out or else your book collection will be incomplete. Other than that I'd avoid it like the plague. His first book 'Patriots' was decent simply because it was part fiction and partly a how-to book and I hadn't run across that idea very often. Plus in the general Survival/Zombies/SHTF/Apocalypse Genre there's not a whole bunch of books to choose from to begin with (which sometimes means that mediocre authors can end up having their books sell like hotcakes just because people like the subject matter). There were a few things that I didn't care for in 'Patriots', but all in all it was an okay book. With this novel however you can't really say a whole lot that's positive. It's story-line is horrible and it's equally as bad as a 'How-to' book. For Survival Fiction and Non-Fiction books that provide a much better story-line or that provide much more useful information from a How-To perspective see the books I've listed below. ***Survival Fiction*** - One Second After by William R. Forstchen - Enemies Foreign and Domestic by Matthew Bracken - Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista by Matthew Bracken - Foreign Enemies And Traitors by Matthew Bracken - The Road by McCarthy - Lights Out by David Crawford - Molon Labe! by Kenneth W. Royce - Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle - Day by Day Armageddon by J. L. Bourne - The Collapse by Stanfield (even with all the typos in 'The Collapse' that book blows this one out of the water) - The Rift by Williams - Unintended Consequences by Ross ***Survival/Preparedness Non-Fiction or How-To Related Books*** - The Boston Gun Bible by Kenneth Royce - Boston on Surviving Y2K by Kenneth Royce (Yeah, I know Y2K didn't happen...still packed full of good info on preparedness). - The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse - Fernando 'Ferfal' Aguirre - Extreme Survival Almanac: Everything You Need to Know to Live Through a Shipwreck, Plane Crash, or Any Outdoor Crisis Imaginable by Reid Kincaid - Civil War II by Chittum - The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan - Total Resistance by H. Von Dach ***Some examples of what I didn't like about this book specifically in no particular order*** - Poor character development or the characters were just uninteresting and flat. - Too many characters in number altogether. - I got sick of being preached to by the author : In many novels of this type you can tell what demographics the author falls into it and to tell you the truth for the most part I don't really mind. In this book though the author is WAY over the top. - He takes WAY too much time going into detail on stuff that simply doesn't matter. - Suspension of disbelief is DEFINITELY needed for some of this book because the odds are always in the characters favor. - The dialogue between characters is irritating: I realize that the 'Good Guys' (and Gals) are supposed to be Christians (I'm pretty sure the reader understands THIS at the very least from the amount of time talking about it), but in an extremely stressful time even the biggest Christian on earth is going to slip. - The actions taken by the characters are too unbelievably moral : In survival situations not everything is going to be black and white from a moral perspective and that's how Rawles tries to lay it out. At any rate that's my perspective on this book and there's more that I don't like about it, but I'm getting bored just talking about this book. I'm pretty disappointed as Rawles's blog is pretty good in my opinion (I'm beginning to think that maybe his blog is pretty good simply because of all the reader contributions and not because of Rawles himself) and 'Patriots' was at least a fair book. However given that THIS book isn't very interesting I'd rather spend the asking price on something worthwhile (a gallon or two of gas, a Mora knife, a box of ammo, a sewing kit or whatever). In my opinion just read the blog (which is free) and skip this book altogether.