3.8 ducks for Flare
A massive solar flare has scorched the earth, destroying all living things that dare to venture out in the daylight. Worse the flare seems to be permanent and isn’t going to mellow out any time soon. Ash wakes from a coma a couple of weeks into the disaster, saved by being in the basement ward at the hospital. Zeke is a gentle giant and a mute. He has survived by being very careful who he approaches during the nights when he can travel and by being non-threatening. Each man is traveling to a place called The Salvation hoping to find a way to survive in this blasted world. The first part of the story is the journey, the second is what happens after they find what they are seeking.
This story surprised me. It had the feeling of the Book of Eli, but in this story the characters travel through a world rendered completely inhospitable to life by a change in the strength of the sun. As the story moves along, it gets weirder, but not in a way that lost me as a reader. Rather it became more compelling like watching some kind of horror that you can’t look away from. The writing is technically almost perfect with very few typos or grammar mistakes to distract me. The twists the book took into the paranormal/supernatural arena were not expected, I thought it was Sci Fi, but it turned out to be more dark fantasy. However the premise was interesting and the extreme flip of the normal ideas of heaven and hell, was well done.
On the down side, the science is completely wrong, so if you are someone who can’t enjoy a story with bad science, don’t read this book. It reminded me of Pilgrim’s Progress or Dante’s Inferno with a modern setting and modern language. It takes a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, but if you can get past that one issue, it is a good read and makes you think.
