Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh ★★☆☆☆
What happens when resources become scarce and society starts to crumble? As the competition for resources pulls America's previously stable society apart, the "New Normal" is a Soft Apocalypse. This is how our world ends; with a whimper instead of a bang. New social structures and tribal connections spring up across America, as the previous social structures begin to dissolve.
Locus Award finalist and John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalist Soft Apocalypse follows the journey across the Southeast of a tribe of formerly middle class Americans as they struggle to find a place for themselves and their children in a new, dangerous world that still carries the ghostly echoes of their previous lives.
Locus Award finalist and John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalist Soft Apocalypse follows the journey across the Southeast of a tribe of formerly middle class Americans as they struggle to find a place for themselves and their children in a new, dangerous world that still carries the ghostly echoes of their previous lives.
Well. I didn't hate this but I also didn't like it either.
I picked this up second hand at a charity shop after reading the synopsis and it only took me a handful of hours to read, so it's not really much of a loss. But it is a little disappointing.
While I appreciated the slow decline approach, I didn't really care about any of the characters. I felt pretty emotionally detached from the book as a whole, which isn't really what you want here. Because listen, I'm the person who can turn on the Hallmark movie ten minutes before the end and start bawling even though I know next to nothing about what's going on. They killed a dog in this book--which we all know is far worse than killing a person--and I felt nothing. So.
I will admit that this book walks the line of gratuity much better than my last read. Because while there is no shortage of horrific acts of violence, it never felt gratuitous. So that's something.
Anyway. Probably not worth your time.
