Review: One Second After
One Second After
William R. Forstchen
Blackstone Audiobooks, March 2009
ISBN 1433256991
Unabridged Audio Book
Read by Joe Barrett
All is well in the small community of Black Mountain, NC, and retired army colonel John Matherson, now a history professor at the local college, is raising his two daughters alone after the death of his wife several years earlier.  Living in this town is just what one would expect–peaceful, calm, generally somewhat like Mayberry–and John is content if not completely happy. One second, all is as it should be and the next, nothing electrical or electronic is working. Within hours, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong and, eventually, the probability that at least this part of the US has suffered an electromagnetic pulse attack is clear.
One Second After
It’s not so easy to imagine the consequences of such an attack when we’re accustomed to the idea of a full nuclear or biochemical event but John and his family and friends find out soon enough how dependent they are on things that no longer work–all but the oldest cars, landline and cell phones, radios, refrigeration, pacemakers, water filtration, sewage treatment, etc.–and how soon a town can run out of necessities such as food and drugs. Along with the horrors, though, the town has flashes of honor and even humor and the reader struggles with them through the first year after the attack.
Is this a beautifully written book? No, and while I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic themes, One Second After is not one of the best and there certainly are numerous flaws. For one thing, the author certainly has an agenda but that is true of nearly every post-apocalyptic novel I can think of, whether it be anti-nuclear, anti-big government, etc.  However, it’s a gripping, chilling story that I will listen to again, primarily because of the possibility of such an event really happening and the fact that we have done nothing to prevent it. The author does a good job of showing how quickly society can lose its way when faced with long-term disaster–imagine a nationwide Katrina–and, while some characters are not fleshed out enough, I did care about the primary players and about the town. Other reviewers who have panned the book have pointed out some grammatical issues in the text but I did not find that to be distracting, most likely because such things are not as obvious in an audio edition. One negative review stated, “The reader doesn’t actually see it happen.” The very nature of an EMP attack means there is nothing to see, no mushroom cloud or destroyed buildings or bodies so I can’t imagine what that reviewer expected to “see”.
Recommended.
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor
December 17, 2009
Tags: audio book, post-apocalyptic, science fiction Posted in: My Reviews
Loading ...
Leave a Reply