Tomorrow War: The Chronicles of Max [Redacted], this book's predecessor, is one of my favorite collapse/prepper books. I re-read it from time to time. This sequel unfortunately flops, and I will explain my opinion as to why...
First off, full disclosure, I am a leftist. Consuming prepper/doomsday fiction is one of my guilty pleasures - I say "guilty" because unfortunately, most prepper fiction is fairly right-wing. There are myriad reasons for this, too many to go into here, but at the heart of the matter it is mainly because those on the right are motivated by fear, and hold a pessimistic view of human nature, and believe that should the status quo be altered, humans will immediately fall back upon their beastly nature. Some prepper fiction, like this book's predecessor, offer a more balanced story with very little political ramblings to divert from the story; Tomorrow War was fun and engaging and didn't require too much suspension of disbelief. I would place it on the higher rung of prepper fiction. Conversely, I would consider the lowest rung of prepper fiction to be the books of James Wesley Rawles, whose horrible writing and flimsy characters will rant for entire pages about Christianity, libertarian philosophy, and who inserts shameless plugs for real-life companies into his plots ("he did his weapons training at Front Site Academy in Nevada, and bought seeds from survivalseeds.com")
Many prepper fiction authors' first books will be quite good, and then the subsequent sequels will invariably become more and more cutout in terms of plot, with lots of filler. William Forstchen's One Second After books are a great example. The first book has an edge of your seat, believable plot about an EMP attack, with some conservative garbage here and there (a longing for a small-town America that no longer exists, the only useful characters are military veterans, etc.) but by the 3rd novel in the series, the plot is a simplistic "freedom-loving man versus tyrannical government" story and the characters go on long rants about socialism as filler. This trend is demonstrative of authors who are out of fresh ideas and just writing to capitalize on the success of their one good story.
This sequel fails to live up to its predecessor, and I feel it is yet another example of this trend. The plot is so meandering, tired, and predictable. After leading a successful insurgent campaign at the climactic end of the previous novel, the main character decides to go solo again and live in a cabin and hunt, for no apparent reason. There are UN peacekeepers on US soil, because of course there are - that John Birch Society nonsense is only the plot of every single right-wing dystopian novel (later on they are just said to be Chinese soldiers, and any mention of UN markings is gone). The provisional US government is subservient to foreign countries and seems to have no driving purpose whatsoever besides confiscating guns from Americans. And just like his previous novel, roving biker gangs are back and doing the government's dirty work. There really are a lot of biker gangs in Bourne's imagination. And while Bourne probably doesn't realize it, the books anticlimactic ending is very similar to the infamous neo-nazi book The Turner Diaries.
There is a lot of filler, mainly about guns (tons and tons of lines like, "I grabbed my suppressed MP5 loaded with 30 rounds of 9mm ammunition") and descriptions of the various meals the characters eat. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't noticeable on every other page - then it becomes obvious that it's filler. Conservative rants abound, and at one point he even uses the term "beta male" (I laughed out loud when I read it).
All in all, a dismally disappointing sequel to a solid novel. Reads like any other run-of-the-mill prepper fiction.