Note that I actually listened to this as an audio book. But if you have Kindle Unlimited, it's free there. It's also a paperback, but I couldn't find the AISN for some reason.

Interestingly, this actually started as a short story when the author was writing a plague novel and began wondering how his special cousin would survive. But it grew and grew until it was a whole novel. He said many of his nephews' unique abilities also appear in this novel in Billy, the main character.

This story is about Billy Todd, a young man with a learning disability and how he and others cope when 95% of the world's population is wiped out by a plague. Billy starts out alone, but then slowly gathers friends, neighbors, and strangers until they are a force to be reckoned with. They fight the evil that seems so pervasive without law and order and they work together to survive.

People who like dystopic and end of days types of stories. Also, if you are into prepping (for the end of days), you may pick up a tip or two. I did.

I listened to this as an audio book and the narrator did a great job with accents. I wasn't sure I'd like it at first, but it really grew on me. I also liked how the book brought up ideas about the end of the world that I didn't think of like people using trains to collect items and terrorize towns along the tracks or that we should consider removing our license tag if we want to be completely anonymous.

Things seemed to be awfully convenient for them. Oh, great! Pretty much everyone shoots great right from the beginning. Look--we met new people...a nurse, a vet tech, a farrier, a leather worker, a carpenter, etc. They didn't meet a girl who had spent her whole life either living under her parents or her husband's roof, never getting any useful skills. They didn't meet a guy who was a CEO with no survival skills. One could argue that they would have died already, but the book starts pretty early on, just a few weeks after the plague, so I feel like there are people who would have lived that long, even with no skills. But maybe I'm wrong.

Totally unprepared for even an emergency like a week without power, let alone something like an apocalyptic event.

While it was annoying that things kept working out so conveniently for the characters, not that they didn't face hardships, but they always ended up with what they needed in some way, still I enjoyed the idea of what could happen in such a scenario. This is definitely not a "how to" book for prepping, but it does bring up some interesting ideas and makes one think.

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Created Feb 18, 2020 at 10:59pm • Submit your own review...