A familiar post-apocalyptic survivalist epic, but it’s told with uncommon power and passion.
Concluding a futuristic trilogy, this novel takes aging hero Elliott Eastman out of his post-apocalyptic colony in Idaho and on an often violent quest east through a devastated America in search of other surviving communities.
This is a blood-and-thunder capper (after America 2038, 2013, etc.) to Ryan’s story starring Eastman, a former Army Ranger and reform-minded Colorado politician. In previous books, Eastman saw America—and the planet—convulse through what he calls the “Great Rendering,” a perfect storm of climate-change drought/flooding, wealth inequality, deficient government, food shortages, rapacious Wall Street traders, and civil unrest. It resulted in total anarchy, rioting, catastrophe, and mutant predator animals overtaking humanity, practically to extinction. Eastman managed to persevere with his family and some 3,000 followers in an isolated stronghold of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in a sustainable community harvesting lake algae to eat (the green stuff, fortunately, possesses restorative powers that keep the now-88-year-old Eastman fairly spry). With years since the last straggler-refugee came into their midst, Eastman ponders whether any other organized outposts of humanity persist. A large expedition led by his most capable son, Elliott the Younger, known as “E,” follows rivers east toward Missouri—and discovers pockets of vicious fiefdoms and psycho holdouts, including formidably armed ex-military men who take slave labor from revenant Native American tribes in the hinterlands. While E, Eastman, and their comrades encounter all kinds of carnivores, human and otherwise, betrayal back home in Idaho takes on a disastrous, familiar shape, and history threatens to repeat itself within North America’s last functioning society. Characters are robustly drawn, and the crosscutting chapters are practically cinematic, as Ryan turns the screws on his gallery of heroes and villains. While concluding the saga, the author avoids a sense of wrapping up everyone in a happily-ever-after package. There is a strong sensation of the beginning of a new world that does not minimize the birth pangs, the scars of the past, or the struggles that lay ahead. With the exception of the final paragraphs, Ryan does not preach on a soapbox about pathologies that laid civilization low; nor does he indulge in the guns, guts, and God populism that often typifies survivalist fiction.
A familiar post-apocalyptic survivalist epic, but it’s told with uncommon power and passion.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5174-1637-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
