Surviving Home

I liked this 2nd book in the series. The actual story is very interesting and keeps you wanting to know Whats next!
But…… there were a LOT of typos in this book. Much more than book 1. For the higher than average price, I expected a LOT better editing. Seemed like the author may have changed some character names during editing as well.

[Semi spoiler below]

Author kept bouncing back and forth between which daughter was shot, Taylor or Lee Ann. For the entire chapter, the name kept swapping back and forth. Also seems as if the neighbors name changed from Don to Howard at some point. Many times don was used in place of Howards name.
There were a few more inconsistencies that didnt add up and a lot of typos.
The character building wasnt as strong as in book 1. So far, this (inexplainable) instant trust and friendship between Mr paranoid and shoot first aka, Morgan and his new pal Jeff really bothered me. It was not in character with the Morgan weve been reading about.
Some characters that were rather prominent in the beginning of this book, just seemed to disappear. It felt as though the author got bored with them and decided to just ignore them. The side effect is that it created some rather annoying dead ends.
Thankfully the actual story line was interesting enough that I didnt just give up.
One last shake of my suspension of disbelief was Morgan and neighbors giving up their home (proposed in the book). It really doesnt make sense. Perhaps if the reasons were better outlined, it would not be so unbelievable. As it is, it seems foolish to go more primitive. Maybe book 3 will have these reasons more apparent.

I’m not here to recap the book, you can find that elsewhere. I’m here to tell you why you should invest your spare time reading this series. If you’ve read my review of book one you can skip ahead because I don’t really have anything new to say, just want the author to have some honest reviews in return for his hard work putting pen to paper.

I read a lot of post-apocalypse fiction. Most writers suck at it. Their scenarios are rather far fetched, their characters are cookie cutter preppers I could never relate to if we were face to face, and the decisions their characters make are so stupid as to put them in deeper jeopardy making their professed prepper status highly questionable and making me hope Darwin got it right so I’ll never have to deal with them.

A.A.’s characters are well developed, thinking people, even the bad guys. They behave in ways that are true to their back story. Yes, they make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes have unpleasant consequences.

As of today, there are maybe 10 or more books in the series. They enter my library as soon as they are released and that’s unusual for me because my experience is that when an author pens a series beyond a certain number of books, they seem to reach a point where they’re either phoning it in to continue milking the cash cow, or they get so tired of the characters and storyline that they begin to hate what they perceive as a rut. Neither pitfall traps this series.

The story arc is such that the plot could run on for another 10 books or more provided the author continues to keep events believable. The characters are not one-note survivalists. They continue to mature and evolve as events unfold.

The author isn’t afraid to kill off a key character or two and new characters are fleshed out just as well as the ones that survive through everything.

In spite of the seriousness of the subject, the author isn’t afraid of some comic relief and there are genuine belly laughs spread throughout the series.

So far, I’ve only been mildly disappointed with one book in the series and I believe that’s because Weatherman bowed to fan pressure and turned a book out before he should have. If you pick up this series, you’ll know which one I’m referring to and I’m sure he does too. When a writer is as social media connected to their fan base as he is, and that base is screaming for the next book, that’s hard to ignore but easy to forgive.

I hope one day to write this well and have my fans clamoring for the next book.

Spoilers in the review!
I bought this series (1-6) on the recommendation of a friend. I found that I couldn’t stand the main character and I hated his entire family. One of his daughters is severely injured at the end of book 6, and I realized I didn’t care enough about what happened to her to buy any more of the series…4 left. It seems like these books are a giant advertisement for the author’s favorite products. Characters are poorly written and based on an EMP attack, the plotline is totally unbelievable. I’d recommend reading “One Second After” by William Forstchen, if you’d like something closer to the truth. I only read all six of the A. American series, because I’d bought and paid for them already. I get the feeling he’ll keep churning out new issues as long as there are buyers for them.

I really enjoyed this second book in the series even more than the first one! I encourage everyone to read this series and consider stocking your shelves and keeping emergency supplies at hand! Even if you dont believe in SHTF scenarios hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, floods, volcanoes, tsunamis, nuclear power plant failures, power outages, and yes… even wars occur. If youre old enough to read this, 9/10 of those have happened in your lifetime. This series is one of the most realistic portrayals of the different groups of people and how they react in emergencies. Those who step up and take responsibility for themselves, their families, and communities, those who bury their heads, those who wait for others to tell them what to do, those who wait for others to provide for them, those who betray their friends and neighbors and yes, even those who just close down or give up.

Can you survive an emergency or will you just roll over and die without your cell phone? Will your brain even let you consider emergency scenarios, or are you already burying your head in the sand?

Which group are you?

How will you react?

Think about it.

…as the first book. Far too many grammatical errors and missing words. Now and then is normal but there were too many in this book and it meant I couldn’t engross myself as much I did the first. The storyline is still brilliant, no unrealistic scenarios or dialogue like in some post disaster/apocalypse novels. The character humour is a little poor but there’s not a lot of it, just enough to notice.

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