Book Review - Patriots

[bobernet]

Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse: A Novel of the Turbulent Near Future by James Wesley Rawles

James is the maintainer of www.survivalblog.com

The book is about a TEOTWAWKI scenario that is sparked not by civil war, terrorism, nukes, etc, but by a financial crisis. All of the normal government and infrastructure services break down, leaving people without power, water, food, police, etc. Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it.

The story follows a group of survivalists who had been working together for a number of years to prepare themselves to be self-sufficient in the event of a tragedy.

There is a lot of good information here about how advance planning was done, what trade-offs were made, priorities, gear selection, location, etc. So, in a sense, it is a light survival preparedness manual wrapped in a novel.

The book has a definite pro-religion/pro-morality bias, and while most of the main characters are overtly Christian, there is not a lot of focus on a particular denomination and there is broad praise for the morality of others whether they be Evangelical Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, etc.

There is a fair amount of detail regarding firearms, electrical generating equipment, medical care away from doctors, etc without getting so loaded down with technical information that it detracts from the story.

The character development was mediocre. I felt like the book told me about characters more than it let me learn about them through events.

Also, there was a good bit of "flashback" where everything meaningful we learned about a character was just a retelling in very short summary format of what they had gone through during the past weeks/months/years.

The author does a good job of describing sometimes violent and disturbing events (rape, torture, death, etc) without getting into "gory details" that would limit the book's audience. I would feel comfortable letting older children read this.

On the nitpicking side, the book is very poorly edited. Whether that's actually on the part of editors or whether it's typesetting mistakes, there are misspellings, wrong words, etc throughout the book. Some may not mind it, but I tend to find those things distracting, especially when they occur as frequently as they do in this printing.

The other issue that I found annoying is some jumping around in the story that wasn't clear whether it was intentional or just inconsistent. An incident would be described as happening in the 5th year, but the next paragraph would be in the 3rd year. That happened a few times, but not as frequently as the "typos" or editing issues.

Overall a decent read, and a book you can feel safe letting your older children read, but probably not at the top of my list.

Best,
Bob

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[pgrass101]

Thanks for the review

[Team American]

Good review, Bob...thanks!

I've read this book and you are pretty much right on about it. I found it to be an enjoyable, thought provoking story that really gets into the logistics of preparing for an end-of-the-world scenario.

Oh...and that being on the receiving end of an artillery barrage can ruin your day...

[pgrass101]

Just saw this link http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070709/bs_nm/iea_energy_dc

Thought it would be good posted here.

[Captain Crunch]

Very good review, Bob. I'll look for this.

I agree 100% with your editing & proofreading comments. No excuse for this in the pulbishing world, IMO.

[TexasDuck]

Good book. Better review.