I genuinely cannot believe any of these positive reviews unless these people have never actually read genuinely good books or know one iota about writing as a craft. I didn’t even reach the 10 min mark on the audiobook and this is already what I came up with. That’s not even getting into the grammatical issues.
“Blisters on the backs of his feet and toes” - hmmm if only there was a word for the back of the feet. Perfect example of self-publishing writers who get into a bad habit of page padding where a 12 book series could likely be just a trilogy. Using “heels” would have removed three unnecessary words.
Having such a boring CV breakdown of rick’s past knowing he graduated high school then went to college then started low at a company and worked his way up. First, you can’t get into college without graduating high school (or ged) so that’s redundant. Second, nearly everyone starts low and works their way up the company ladder. I get the author is trying to shovel a massive dose of “look at how tech dependent we are” down our throats within the first page but it’s absolutely unnecessary or, at the very least, not worth so much excessively wasted space. Rick works in tech for a car company, that’s all we need to know.
Why is it important to know he had an issue with his parents only to find out they made up and somehow that’s important to him having a plot of land all in one sentence? It’s not! First, the relationship with his parents is unimportant - even if it becomes important later for added stress elements SHOW US they have bumpy history through an argument or some kind of dialogue. Second, we can all easily assume that a working man has a home of some kind. Even if we have to know about the house there’s no reason to jam this much unimportant data down our throats this fast. Of course the house is going to be a perfect prepper house too. Why bother to make it interesting to see the characters try to figure things out and make mistakes (that could be dangerous or deadly) that most everyone else would be experiencing instead having everything they need and knowing everything there’s to know immediately. There’s no doubt this is going to be a prepper handbook about everything you should be doing and all the stuff you should have on hand instead of an survival story. Also, again, why TELL US? The writer has zero concept of “show, don’t tell” arch as “showing” us the house when we actually get to a scene that involves the house instead of cramming more unneeded details.
While we know rick’s boring, typical, Everyman life we have no idea about where he is, his surroundings, why is he running, his feelings - nothing. The author spent two sentences on introducing us to the scene and then went off on a tangent of verbal diarrhea about everything else that’s utterly unimportant. SCENE BUILDING - LEARN IT.
The writer just went through all this preaching about work can be tough so life at home is simple. Self sustainability, blah blah, then puts his single character into a deluxe car. I can’t tell if this is just another example of unnecessary information (why is the size of the car important unless we find out it’s perfectly convenient for him to pack it full of emergency supplies later) or if the author is trying to purposefully ironic but I think given what I’ve seen of the writing “ability” thus far that would be giving him too much credit.
Remember how I said we know nothing about the scene already? So apparently this guy was running with luggage that wasn’t mentioned, which is funny considering this guy loves to give us a tsunami of details that have nothing to do with our scene but can’t be bothered to give us any information about what’s happening in the actual here-and-now scene. Plus, running with luggage is awfully awkward to do. Why was it important to break down the actions of someone getting into the car - putting his stuff in the back and then getting in. There’s zero connectability. Nothing like “Rick reached the car rental, sweaty but relieved that he was still on schedule and couldn’t wait to blast the AC to fight the scourge of a day it is outside.” In just those few words I took almost everything from your first page but now we have sensations - we feel what Rick is feeling, we get that he’s hot and sweaty, we understand the weather is hot, but we know this by CREATIVE WRITING instead of just being lectured at “Rick did this. Then this. Then that.”
Why is he meeting government officials regarding a single company starting to add tech to their cars in a world that the author has told us is already almost entirely-tech reliant. Even if the company needs to receive government approval for things the guy selling the IT aspects wouldn’t be involved - that would be lobbyist and golf course circle jerks like all such political wheel greasing is done.
Ka-boom. Really? Are we in a Batman episode?
We can’t get this author to write any descriptive information then he has the car’s glass both shattering and cracking in the same sentence. One extreme to the other. Wait? First he’s driving, then he stops with the explosion and instead of instinct saying “get out of there” Rick takes the key out of the ignition and then a nanosecond later decides to put it back in and start the car again? First, we can understand him stopping and looking back at what happened but then most people would flee. Why does he dick around with the keys. Second, again with giving the wrong details. We don’t need to know he took the key out then put it in then started it. Just say he stopped at the explosion and then panic kicked in and he floored it to get away from whatever was happening. If you need fluff you can say he started turning on the radio for any emergency alerts.