Book Review: After America

Hail and salutations Angry Fans! Today I’m going to move away from my normal rants and raves and review a new book titled “After America” by John Birmingham.

This is the second book in a trilogy that takes place after a disaster has wiped out all human life within North America. The first book in the series, “Without Warning” takes place in 2003 just before the Untied States went into Iraq.

Now, if you haven’t read the two books, and don’t want spoilers, leave now. 🙂

In the first book, Without Warning, most of the United States military is deployed overseas and getting ready for the invasion of Iraq. Suddenly the entire world loses communications with America. The internet is up, and other communications systems are live but there is no one there.

It slowly dawns on people that every single person on the North American continent with a few exceptions is dead, and that some sort of energy field is present that people can’t cross. If they do, they are killed. This barrier leaves Alaska, Parts of the Pacific Northwest, Cuba and Hawaii untouched.

The realization that the United States is history leads to all sorts of interesting things, chief of which is the U.S. military. Most of the forces and a significant amount of equipment is outside the affected area, but the generals and admirals now have no civilian command. Since there are always Trident missile subs on patrol, there were nuclear weapons not under political control. Later on in the story this is an issue.

The first book was interesting in how the world handles the sudden disappearance of a 15 trillion dollar economy along with 300 million people. The only survivors were people at the edges of the event and those who were out of the country.

What happens is the world falls apart. Israel decides they are in real trouble and lets fly with their nuclear forces. The Muslims in Europe start rioting and attempting to take over.

All in all it was a good what if story. The ending concluded with a new president being told that the energy field was gone and that the continent was now open.

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This brings us to the second book in the series, After America. This book takes place several years after the first book. The world is not a good place. Besides the loss of almost the entire North American population, hundreds of millions more have died due to a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, Israel’s pounding the Arab countries as well as Iran, and general starvation and everything else.

In America, New York City is a battlefield as looters from around the country are going after anything that isn’t nailed down. The new American government is trying to recover the country and repopulate with both Americans who were overseas and new immigrants. The economy is a complete shambles and the U.S. is for all intents and purposes, broke.

And here is one of the big holes in Mr. Birmingham’s plot. It looks like he completely forgot about Fort Knox, home of the United States gold reserves. There’s somewhere between 5000 and 8000 TONS of gold there. I’ll let the math heads figure out the true value.

One of the first things that would happen once the “wave” went away would be the securing of all nuclear weapons and the gold & silver reserves. Then they would secure New York city since there are even more gold reserves in there. The odds of pirates and looters getting a foothold are extremely slim.

Another issue is Mr. Birmingham’s politics come through a bit. He is obviously not a fan of former Governor Sarah Palin, and tends to project his views of the world into his work. It looks like he’s been a victim of way to much propaganda on what people think Americans are.

You can see that he’s been talking to Americans and is doing his best. He does develop his characters nicely. However, he does put a bit to much political correctness into things.

Towards the end of the book you can see him making the President, a central character from the first book move from a somewhat spineless wimp into a President who understands he must make hard decisions.

I don’t know when the third book will be released, but I will be buying it when it comes out. Even with the flaws, and there are a lot, it’s a good yarn. I recommend the books and suggest you buy them. If you have a Kindle, you can follow the links and get the kindle versions.

Until Next time..

~The Angry Webmaster~