A review by zenithharpink
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
5.0
THIS BOOK IS TERRIFYING. Not because it's a horror story, but because of the circumstances of story. Though set in the late 50s America (Florida, to be specific), the global politics sounded so familiar.
Aside from my initial (and ongoing) terror as I read this through, this is a great survival adventure. Admittedly, there were quite a few lucky breaks that our band of survivors catch-but that was needed or this would have been more of a dystopian wasteland story, rather than the survival story of people coming together. The pace of this book was pretty solid, and there was a good amount of detail in a book that was fairly short.
The only perspective I would like to have seen more of was the military aspect of things. Basically, the reader only has narrative information related to military activities was up to the meltdown-after, only information that the survivors had access to was made available to the reader. It was a circumstance I wasn't wild about, especially given the taste of omnipotence that the reader was given at the beginning of the book was sorely missed.
I recommend this book to everybody-it's thoroughly entertaining, thoroughly terrifying, and thoroughly well written.
Aside from my initial (and ongoing) terror as I read this through, this is a great survival adventure. Admittedly, there were quite a few lucky breaks that our band of survivors catch-but that was needed or this would have been more of a dystopian wasteland story, rather than the survival story of people coming together. The pace of this book was pretty solid, and there was a good amount of detail in a book that was fairly short.
The only perspective I would like to have seen more of was the military aspect of things. Basically, the reader only has narrative information related to military activities was up to the meltdown-after, only information that the survivors had access to was made available to the reader. It was a circumstance I wasn't wild about, especially given the taste of omnipotence that the reader was given at the beginning of the book was sorely missed.
I recommend this book to everybody-it's thoroughly entertaining, thoroughly terrifying, and thoroughly well written.