Entry tags:
Reading: Two survivalist novels.
PATRIOTS by James Wesley Rawles. Set in the area of Moscow, Idaho, following an economic collapse, this story follows Todd Gray and his community of fellow survivalists as they adapt to life after "the Crunch", fend off brigands, form an alliance with a neighboring group, and eventually do battle with globalist-backed forces. Rawles is sometimes seen as the godfather of the modern-day prepper movement, and is the author of two nonfiction books on survivalism.
DISSOLUTION by W. Michael Gear. This story follows Sam Delgado and a group of archaeology students at a site near the Tappan Ranch in northwestern Wyoming, as they receive news of a worldwide banking collapse and subsequent foreign military attacks on the East and West Coasts. The students-turned-survivalists bond with one another and with the Tappans, learn how to survive in a changed world, and finally defeat the warlord Edgewater. The author is one half of the O'Neal-Gear writing team, who published 'People of the Wolf' and many other works of fiction. In both setting and date of composition, 'Dissolution' (published in 2021) is much later than POTW, the Gears' debut novel of 30 years earlier, which follows a band of Paleo-Indians as they hunt mammoths in ice age North America. Interestingly, both stories feature a pair of estranged twins (Runs In Light and Raven Hunter in POTW, Brandon and Breeze in Dissolution), and both books stress the theme of a single people that has become tragically divided.
I am not an expert on survivalist matters, so I'll confine my comments to the ordinary reader's perspective. I found both 'Patriots' and 'Dissolution' to be well-written, engaging stories that keep you involved in the plot and the characters. In 'Patriots', the main characters are mostly college-educated professionals and full-time preppers; the cast of 'Dissolution' is a group of students and others mostly thrown together by fate. Both books begin with the premise of an economic collapse.
'Patriots' is more expository in its style, serving both as entertainment and as a prepper's manual, so you're going to encounter long lists of gear and how-to passages that don't necessarily advance the pace of the plot. 'Dissolution' is the work of an accomplished novelist, and I felt the characters were more complicated and ambiguous. Both stories end on a satisfying "good guys win, bad guys lose" note, but I found 'Dissolution' somehow much darker. In 'Dissolution' as in POTW, the explicit descriptions of violence and carnage are infrequent, but they are there and they are very graphic; and the protagonists struggle with internal demons that are not so evident in 'Patriots'.
One thing that weakened 'Dissolution' for me was the constant editorializing by the author (ostensibly expressed through the journal of one of the characters), which is largely a tiresome litany decrying the "division" in American society while taking great pains to avoid favoring one side or the other. So we have speeches directed against "the Republicans, the Democrats, the religious right, the social progressives, Antifa, QAnon" and blah blah blah. It sounds too much like a glib politician who wants to be seen as condemning this generic "extremism" thing without taking a position on anything.
So, both books had their strengths and their weaknesses, but I enjoyed them both and I'm glad I read 'Patriots' and 'Dissolution' - and I'm looking forward to reading the sequels ('Survivors' and 'Fourth Quadrant' respectively).
DISSOLUTION by W. Michael Gear. This story follows Sam Delgado and a group of archaeology students at a site near the Tappan Ranch in northwestern Wyoming, as they receive news of a worldwide banking collapse and subsequent foreign military attacks on the East and West Coasts. The students-turned-survivalists bond with one another and with the Tappans, learn how to survive in a changed world, and finally defeat the warlord Edgewater. The author is one half of the O'Neal-Gear writing team, who published 'People of the Wolf' and many other works of fiction. In both setting and date of composition, 'Dissolution' (published in 2021) is much later than POTW, the Gears' debut novel of 30 years earlier, which follows a band of Paleo-Indians as they hunt mammoths in ice age North America. Interestingly, both stories feature a pair of estranged twins (Runs In Light and Raven Hunter in POTW, Brandon and Breeze in Dissolution), and both books stress the theme of a single people that has become tragically divided.
I am not an expert on survivalist matters, so I'll confine my comments to the ordinary reader's perspective. I found both 'Patriots' and 'Dissolution' to be well-written, engaging stories that keep you involved in the plot and the characters. In 'Patriots', the main characters are mostly college-educated professionals and full-time preppers; the cast of 'Dissolution' is a group of students and others mostly thrown together by fate. Both books begin with the premise of an economic collapse.
'Patriots' is more expository in its style, serving both as entertainment and as a prepper's manual, so you're going to encounter long lists of gear and how-to passages that don't necessarily advance the pace of the plot. 'Dissolution' is the work of an accomplished novelist, and I felt the characters were more complicated and ambiguous. Both stories end on a satisfying "good guys win, bad guys lose" note, but I found 'Dissolution' somehow much darker. In 'Dissolution' as in POTW, the explicit descriptions of violence and carnage are infrequent, but they are there and they are very graphic; and the protagonists struggle with internal demons that are not so evident in 'Patriots'.
One thing that weakened 'Dissolution' for me was the constant editorializing by the author (ostensibly expressed through the journal of one of the characters), which is largely a tiresome litany decrying the "division" in American society while taking great pains to avoid favoring one side or the other. So we have speeches directed against "the Republicans, the Democrats, the religious right, the social progressives, Antifa, QAnon" and blah blah blah. It sounds too much like a glib politician who wants to be seen as condemning this generic "extremism" thing without taking a position on anything.
So, both books had their strengths and their weaknesses, but I enjoyed them both and I'm glad I read 'Patriots' and 'Dissolution' - and I'm looking forward to reading the sequels ('Survivors' and 'Fourth Quadrant' respectively).