One Second After

Title: One Second After

Author: William R. Forstchen

Series: The John Matherson Trilogy

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Novel

Pages: 511

Synopsis:

John Matherson is a retired Colonel and war veteran, who is now a professor of history at the Montreat Christian College at Black Mountain, North Carolina. He is the widowed father of two daughters, Jennifer and Elizabeth. On the second Tuesday of May at 4:50 pm, all the phone lines and electrical appliances all go dead. Within hours, John Matherson suspects that there is an electromagnetic pulse (emp) attack on the United States. With the electromagnetic pulse attack, the United States has been thrown back into the 19th century and the whole town enters into a battle for survival. John Matherson enters into a struggle to save his family and his small town from the elements and other threats.

My Thoughts:

This book’s biggest strength here is its premise. It has an awesome premise that intrigued me. As the threat of an EMP attack is a real possibility with devastating circumstances.

The other major strength that this book has is its main character, John Matherson. Unlike the other books that I’ve read so far, this blog has multiple points of view, this is not one of those books. The only perspective we have in this entire book is our main character. And in books like this getting your main protagonist right is crucial. John Matherson is smart, a family man, knows how to defend himself. However he also does have some flaws: he’s overprotective of his family, and he’s addicted to Cigarettes. As this person smokes cigarettes almost any chance he gets! He also has to learn to become a leader during this crisis.

The book was also very readable as I was able to get through it pretty quickly.

However, I have several issues with this book. This book really needs to be reminded: “Show, don’t tell.” As quite a few of the action scenes happen off-screen. And we just get an explanation of what happened from one of the characters in the novel. Most of the action scenes just get explained through expository dialogue. For example, there was a riot that happened on the town’s borders between refugees and the people defending the town. And we don’t get to see this happen! It’s just explained to us what happened through conversation! I would have been interested in seeing the entire scene! It would have helped make the book better! Another example is that in the “Battle Scene” near the end of the book between a group of cannibals and the town. A lot of the important characters all die off-screen! We only get mostly an explanation on what happened! If they shown us the battle and the characters dying, it could have really developed quite a few of the characters in this novel!

Another issue I have is most of the major scenes are all just meetings and speeches that go on just a little too long. Why not show us the plague that is wiping people out or conflicts between the townspeople more or even the hordes of refugees trying to storm the town’s gate?

While I do think the main character John Matherson is one of the very few assets in this book. The rest of the characters I found were pretty weak. As almost none of the characters have any personality or opinions of their own. Everyone just seems to agree with our main character! It would have helped build conflict in this story if there was some disagreement between the characters.

My final criticism of this book was the romance part of this book. So in this book, our main character falls for this woman named Makala Turner, who is a supervising nurse who is stranded in Black Mountain. The romance in this book is so weak. As we don’t know anything about Makala until over halfway through this book. And just like a lot of the other parts of this book, their romance is explained rather than shown. You can honestly remove the entire romance subplot from this book and still keep the same plot, as it added nothing to the story.

I was honestly disappointed by this book. I like post-apocalyptic fiction such as On the Beaches by Nevil Shute, but this book doesn’t even come close to being as good as On the Beaches were. While the premise and the story are good, the poor writing and characters are enough to make me unlikely to read this again.

Rating: