Genre: Adult Fantasy
Pages: 419
Published: 2017
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Publisher’s Synopsis:
“It began on New Year’s Eve.
The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed–and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.
Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river–or in the ones you know and love the most.
As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.
In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.
The end has come. The beginning comes next.”
My Review:
I am saddened that I didn’t enjoy this that much. I love Nora Roberts, but I just couldn’t get into this one. I wanted to rate it higher just out of sense of loyalty to this author, but it would be a lie, because I just didn’t like this book. If anything, I think I learned that I prefer high-fantasy because it frustrated me that the magic aspect of this story seemed to take a backseat. I did enjoy the post-apocolyptic scene though, as this is one of my favorite themes. Considering what 2020 brought the world, it was an eerie read when the details were so accurate to things we actually experienced. However, the two themes of magic and world-collapse were not tied together well and it felt like I was reading two different stories instead of a collective one. It took too long to get any real sense of what was happening and why and by then I just had a hard time believing things because there wasn’t enough build up. I also had a difficult time keeping up with the characters, especially because it switches between groups of people so frequently, and even by the end I found myself still getting confused. I wasn’t particularly drawn to any of the characters either, maybe because there are just so many that none of them felt really in-depth. Overall, I was just kind of disappointed at the blandness, a stark contrast to many of her other renowned novels.
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