In 2043 the datscape (the new financial system the world is built on) is attacked by viruses that destroy everything. A series of assassinations, including the President of the United States, follow in the wake of the massive financial catastrophe. Society as we know it is destroyed as the value of money becomes nothing. Twenty years later England is a rural backwater, a middle-ages-like world of barter and trade, where you can only trust your neighbour and visitors are shot before they steal or rape or kill you.
Jake was there at the beginning, he was witness to the datscape’s destruction, he was one of those instrumental in the attempts to avoid its end. For that his friends and family were slaughtered and he barely escaped with his life, taken in by a small town near the ruins of Corfe castle. But their fearful and desperate lives are going to get much worse and the feared trouble will return once again to turn their lives upside down…
The more exciting parts of the book are the destructive flashbacks and the later section where the original danger returns. The rest of the book is a little too safe for a post-apocalyptic world, it’s more a rural idyl.
This is the first novel in a twenty book series, and it feels like it. Its epic story isn’t fully revealed, but we get a hint towards the end, the majority of the book acts as introduction, giving us the background of our protagonist and the world in which he finds himself.
More rural fantasy than SF for the most part, it’s safe to ssume that there will be moretroduction, giving us the background of oassume that later novels will involve much more SF related material.
Not a bad novel, but disappointing, and I doubt I will bother with the next nineteen novels. Judging from this one, it could have been written as a trilogy with some good editing.
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