Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Lee Harden #2

Southlands

Rate this book
THERE WILL BE BLOOD.After being sequestered to a bunker to recover from his wounds, Lee Harden is finally going topside with his fellow Project Hometown Coordinator, Terrence "Tex" Lehy. Lee wants to ally the UES with Texas, in order to combat the threat of a powerful oil cartel to the south. But Tex's methods raise serious questions, and Lee quickly discovers that Texas has its own set of problems.In the Fort Bragg Safe Zone, the conflict with the Lincolnists is rapidly escalating. Master Sergeant Carl Gilliard has just returned, and he’s intent on destroying the Lincolnists, using whatever means is necessary. Angela is caught in the middle, unable to reconcile her sense of civil morality with her desire for justice.One thing remains before there is peace, there will be blood.

503 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 26, 2021

626 people are currently reading
259 people want to read

About the author

D.J. Molles

45 books1,431 followers
D.J. Molles became a New York Times and USA today bestselling author while working full time as a police officer. He's since traded his badge for a keyboard to produce over 20 titles. When he's not writing, he's taking steps to make his North Carolina property self-sustainable, and training to be at least half as hard to kill as Lee Harden (his most popular protagonist).

Molles also enjoys playing his guitar and drums, drawing, cooking, and “shredding that green pow” on his Onewheel.

Most nights you can find him sitting on the couch surrounded by his dogs and family, trying to stream an hour of Netflix with his really sketchy satellite internet connection.

Are you interested in becoming a writer? I've started a video series called "Lessons in Writing" which you can find on all my socials.

Follow on IG & FB @djmolles
TikTok @djmollesauthor

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
621 (63%)
4 stars
294 (29%)
3 stars
60 (6%)
2 stars
8 (<1%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
Profile Image for Tracy  P. .
1,152 reviews12 followers
December 23, 2021
'Southlands' is an excellent and exciting continuation of the Lee Harden apocalyptic adventure. There are sad losses of a few main characters, the Primals are more wily and ferocious in their frenzied hunt for any warm blooded creatures they can find to feed on, and human traitors inciting fights to the death have become common place.
Narrator Christian Rummel continues to be amazing as the sole audiobook narrator and keeping me on the edge of my seat from start to finish.
30 reviews3 followers
July 10, 2019
To start, I want to state unequivocally that Mr. Molles can write the absolute HELL out of an action scene. More specifically, I'm talking about the sorts of scenes found in this series of novels: military operative against military operative action scenes. This author is one of VERY few I've ever read who writes a scene with such tight pacing, such subtle detail crammed into VERY fast paced lines. It reads like a movie, which is something that I've not often encountered. I say that as someone who has a pretty solid mental-picture level imagination for these sorts of things, and the Harden books (all of them including the original six books) just have such a flow to them that it becomes very like watching a movie. You see every mag change, every round impacting a wall over a character's head. You feel every blow of a fist, or the stabbing of the knife hastily pulled from a sheathe because your gun ran dry. It's all extraordinarily well done. I have read so much military and sci-fi fiction in my life that I've become well versed in how clunky action scenes can be if you get bogged down into details, or the author tries too hard to show off the research they'd done beforehand. There's just such a flow of action that it makes these books a sheer joy to read, as well as making them go by VERY quickly. I usually read a Molles book in a single sitting.

With that out of the way, I'll say this. I can't really review this book as I've done others, because if I'm thinking back on it, there really isn't much that goes forward past the events from the plot of the previous book. It's simply an advancing of those various events. Lee and his team are essentially trying to join up with another group of folks who have also rebelled against the new President, because he's The Bad Guy, who has also joined up with a drug (now oil) Cartel from Central America. This was established in book 1 (GO READ IT IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY!). On top of that, there's a side plot where back home at Lee's camp in the safe zone (heh remember when this series was mainly about humans fighting rage zombies after the fall of Civilization?) a small faction of people who believe President Bad Guy is their leader, not this new President who was elected by all the survivors locally and so they're basically trying to overthrow President Good Guy. That whole subplot comes to a head when the camp is overrun after a fight between this faction, and the rest of the survivors and the Military under President Good Guy (who's a woman named Angela, I digress).

This sideplot happens more or less in the same realtime as Lee and his team fighting alongside the forces from Texas with a couple other Project Hometown operatives. Many shooting engagements happen, a lot of good guys die, and some of the top-level bad guys get killed also. Lee loses multiple close friends, and by the end of the book, his humanity has been stripped from him and he's become (what's described as) an Angel of Death, due to having everything that made life worth living taken from him. The book ends with Lee standing over a pile of bodies, covered in blood with murder in his eyes, and you close the book with the feeling of "Oooooohhhh maaaaan, the bad guys are DONE, EVERYBODY'S gonna die!!!" So, this book is really setting things up for a giant confrontation in the third book, and I can't wait to read it.

Some additional notes.

This book has done very well in moving towards a The Walking Dead sort of storytelling where the monsters (the Primals) have become a background threat, because as it turns out, the real monster in this world is Human nature. The ACTUAL monsters are relegated to a side-threat that while still very credible, are no longer the main antagonists of the book series. That said, the Primals have remained a big threat, and in this book, the side plot of their evolution continues. Now that we're a few years past the big Apocalypse moment and most of humanity has died, it turns out that the Primals have begun to evolve. Previously, the Primals were merely human beings which had been "turned" by a virus that ate the parts of the brain that control all higher functions, leaving what was little more than an animal who was hungry for human flesh. Now, they've begun to reproduce and the new evolved Primals are bigger, faster (both much more so than a normal human being), and have more cunning than before. They are smart enough to get through traps or locked doors that had stopped them before. On top of that, the survivors learn that these new Primals grow at a very rapid rate, able to produce more Primals within a couple of years from their own birth.

It's terrifying, because it means that even if Lee and his team "win", they're still going to have to face these creatures, which are busy breeding new armies. Yes, armies. Previously, the Primals would be encountered in packs, of ten or twenty at most. In this book, there's a situation where a team of survivors are at an abandoned mall tracking down one of the Primals they'd managed to tranquilize and then put a tracker on. They find the tracker on the ground (because the Primals are now smart enough, that the one was able to remove the collar) and as the team's standing there looking around, suddenly an entire horde of hundreds of Primals swarm down to attack them and they narrowly escape.

In conclusion, there are so many things to love about this series and these characters. There are definitely callbacks to other books/shows/movies in the PostApoc/Zombie genre sure, but they're all woven together in a fresh, interesting way. Lee Harden will definitely remind people in some ways of Rick Grimes from Walking Dead, in that by this time, he's a worn down, tired, beaten man who has lost so much, he's starting to lose any drive to keep going. It's only when one of his absolute closest friends dies (the latest) after a helicopter attack ambush that they didn't see coming (but that the reader will) that kills most of the rest of his men also that he just loses it. He has been pushed absolutely beyond a breaking point psychologically, and just becomes a stone-eyed killer who feels absolutely dead inside. To be honest, I am not sure what's going to happen with him in the next book, because in this book there isn't really anything left anyone or anything can take from him because it's all gone. His friends are mostly dead, his home back at Ft. Bragg has fallen to Primals, and all his plans were thwarted by a powerful enemy military force who's been three steps ahead of him and his ragtag band the entire time.

It's absolutely compelling storytelling, and I cannot recommend all of these books enough. I can't WAIT for the next one. I rate this book five stars only because I can't give it ten!
Profile Image for Silver Thistle .
150 reviews33 followers
March 24, 2024
I don't know why I'm tagging/shelving this as 'zombie' tho, it's like 1% zombie story now and 99% bad guys fighting bad guys. Feel like I might be over it but keep wanting to give the series another chance. On to the next...
Profile Image for Ryan Moore.
10 reviews2 followers
May 28, 2020
*** Spoiler Warning ***

I marked this as containing spoilers as well.

I read and enjoyed this book and I thought that the twists were fresh and while obvious and sometimes telegraphed were still wrapped in a surprising way. I was surprised at Sam's arc; surprised by how Claire was written off (Elsie, not as surprising - I don't know what she was thinking going back to the hangar or what she expected).

I also enjoyed the inner struggles many of the characters had to deal with and there was more nuance to military characters like Carl than I would have expected.

The only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 because it's incredibly stupid to send Julia out in the front lines of that mission even if they thought it was going to be a cake walk. She's the only trained medic that can perform lifesaving surgery and while it would be helpful to have her on the battlefield she's much more valuable of an asset than that and she should have been kept back at the bunker. As we know from Lee, the soldiers have enough basic training to triage wounds on the battlefield; sure there would be more deaths without her there but she'd save more if she was kept alive.

I'm interested in hearing other perspectives on this, especially those with more knowledge of military engagements.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Allison Evarts.
201 reviews5 followers
June 4, 2019
**Spoilers**

I have loved all the Remaining books and now the Lee Harden continuation. I was looking forward to this book so much and am sorry to say its only going to get 2 stars from me which according to Goodreads, means it was ok. It often felt predictable to me and the big ambush of Lee and company towards the end was just dumb. I knew what was going to happen before it did (and I am not a reader who usually figures things out or tries to guess ahead of events). I tried to take myself, as a reader, out of the equation and see if I was a character, would I have known. The answer is, I would have at least suspected and somebody should have brought up the possibility in the battle planning. If your "man inside" calls and says he feels like they're onto him and this might be his last call - how could you not for a second wonder if he had been fed this information?? Shucks, I hope the next one is better.
Profile Image for Cory Richey.
1 review2 followers
June 19, 2019
The Harden series and it’s origin series The Remaining has held my attention through 8 novels and two novellas. I drive for a living and listen to multiple books a week. The pairing of a great story and a great narrator are rare but on those occasions, and this is definitely one, it makes the miles fly by. The protagonist, Lee Harden, is who most men would like to think they’d be in a similar situation. He and his very small and ever shrinking circle of trusted friends are dealing daily with the after effects of a horrible apocalyptic event. They’re always struggling towards the light at the end of the tunnel only to end up dodging another train. It’s a dark series and judging from the end of this book it’s about to get a whole lot darker. Thanks Mr. Molle for a great story and Mr. Rummel for bringing it to life.
Profile Image for Ralph Wark.
345 reviews13 followers
November 5, 2019
I love this series

Miller tale of an operative, trained to rebuild after an apocalypse, the zombie line in this case, is well written with a variety of well written characters and situations. Now the zombies have evolved and become Primals, zombies that hunt and plan on packs.

As usual, the greatest enemy is other people. Either the Nuevas Fronteras cartel in the US south, a competitive country in Greely, Co, or dissenters within the Fort Bragg safe zone that will go to extreme.lengths to.bring it down.

So people you have become attached to die, others grow up, and others get hard to the way life is.

It's a great adventure tale, realistic and well written. Good recreational read.
Profile Image for rick incremona.
209 reviews
September 3, 2019
If i could give more stars i would. This story just tore my heart out, and kept my adrenaline going the entire time. Spoilers after this point. D.J., for the love of GOD can you please let Lee find Deuce again? Please do not "old yeller" us again with the dog! That being said the loss of Julia really brought out the rage Lee needed o keep going after Brigs and his men. I'm glad Abe is still around, and I am excited to see where Tex turns up. Thank God that Angela finally woke up and smelled the coffee. This was simply incredible. I need to read the next book! As soon as that email goes out to the fan page, or facebook group I am ordering my copy no matter what my wife says!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Steve.
185 reviews1 follower
June 28, 2019
Southlands is the second book in the Lee Harden series, which is also a sequel to The Remaining novels, of which there are 6. (and 2 novellas). With that in mind, I definitely recommend that you don't read Southlands unless you've read the other books first. Now...Southlands. This is an incredible book and it may be the best book I've read by DJ Molles. The writing is good and the story continues to evolve and get more complex with each installment. There is so much emotion in this book and so many tense moments. It is truly rare to find a book capable of pulling you in so deep and once you're pulled in, it gets nasty pretty quick. Highly recommended. 5/5
Profile Image for Michael  Keller.
935 reviews10 followers
August 29, 2019
In the heat of battle an operator fights for himself and his family.

Loves me some Lee Harden! Another terrific storyline around Lee, Julia, Abe and Tex. Fighting off the primals was bad enough without having to battle two forces along with them. The Greely folk in Colorado and the Nuevas Fronteras bunch are scrambling for power - electric, fuel and people - and the United Eastern States need to control all three. Gonna be a Hell of a fight!

Excellent storyline, terrific characters provide a page burner that continues the Lee Harden story. Get it! Read it! Love it!
243 reviews3 followers
March 26, 2021
D.J. has a gift for putting you in that moment with whatever character he decides to bring in from of you. In this book you get an irritated cartel boss, a secret informer imbedded in the Briggs side, a mercenary leader working for Briggs playing his own game. You have a new president with some really bad shit to deal with, a teenage boy becoming a man, a secret group and their leaders against the president, a frustrated operator and of course primals. Not to mention, Lee, Abe, Tex and Julia doing thier thing. I would give it fifty gold stars if it let me.
Profile Image for Robert Tew.
13 reviews
July 2, 2022
The world of Lee Hardin is where I thrive. The story line and scenarios capture my attention and provide me with insights as to how we all should be preparing for difficult and unexpected calamity.
The interactions of the characters and the mechanization's of those in positions of power mimic the daily news and should be considered as possible on a serious level.
D. J. Molles , as a writer, has had my attention for several years and continues to provoke me with the many "what ifs" he crafts into his writing. A very good read.
Profile Image for Maggie Deaton.
749 reviews4 followers
June 3, 2024
Battle lines blur amid the carnage and death....

Yet the fight for freedom and life never slows even as heroes die and new ones are forged from the flames. The weak find their strength to continue their battles and the strong rise yet again from the ashes of fire and death like the legendary phoenix of old... And the legend of Captain Harden continues to grow as like the hopes of the survivors, it too will not die. A wonderful series on the heels of another Captain Harden legend!
131 reviews
November 5, 2024
Wonderfully Intense!

Okay, first I want to thank DJ Molles for his skill in making you feel like you are right there with the Characters! This is a new to me author and he just floored me with his writing. I felt for so me people Sam, Julia, Angela, and Sam to just mention a few. I also wanted them to wake up and figure out Claire and Elsa (mainly Angela) This book truly had everything, suspense, intrigue, love and action, action and more action. I binge read the first two and will be continuing this series because I so want to know what happens next.
39 reviews1 follower
August 6, 2019
A must read for any Lee Harden fans.

The book shows the ongoing struggle to rebuild society when still struggling to fend off the primal threat.

The paranoia of not knowing if it would be a human or primal that would kill you is fantastic suspense.

Can't wait for the next book.

DJ Molles is a a cracking author.
Profile Image for Louise Feagans.
228 reviews7 followers
July 9, 2019
Southlands

I am really loving this continuation of Lee Garden series. Although, this particular book did make me shed a few tears. This is the second book in this series so if you haven't started it yet, you should get the first book and you will be hooked just like I am.
6 reviews
September 19, 2019
A wonderful addition to the Remaining series.

Anything written by DJ Molles is worth reading. The Remaining universe is my favorite. Was very happy when the Lee Harden series started as I just wasn't ready for the story to end.
824 reviews7 followers
October 10, 2019
Good

This is a most exciting book, action packed. Lee Harden is an intriguing character. Meanwhile back at Fort Bragg, Angela is forced into a deadly conflict with the Lincolnists group.
Profile Image for John Clark.
2,606 reviews50 followers
April 4, 2020
I didn't read the first book, but that in no way diminished my enjoyment of this one. Plenty of action, a plot split between various locations and players, intrigue, lots of gore and pretty scary mutants. Everything you'd want to get through a dreary damp weekend.
27 reviews
September 21, 2020
Freaking awesome.

This series keeps getting better. Intense. Dual story lines often bog down, but the two here could stand alone and be just as gripping. Sorry for those lost, and glad Lee carries on.
Profile Image for Angie Anderson.
584 reviews7 followers
November 9, 2021
Damn fine book!

DJ Molles is one neck of an author. He just has a knack for character development and world building. His story is terrific. If you only read one series if books, I recommend this one.
Profile Image for James Maxon.
Author 9 books43 followers
April 25, 2024
The first 3/4 of this book was on the slow side, but the last 1/4 made up for it double-fold. Some books start with a bang and end on a predictable note, whereas this one does the opposite. Exciting, engaging, and even heartfelt before the last page was finished.
Profile Image for William.
73 reviews
June 15, 2019
A fantastic read and heart pounding installation to the Lee Harden/The Remaining series. #HardenTheF*ckUp
11 reviews
June 16, 2019
Excellent

Can't wait for the next book to come out once started very hard to put down story line places you there in the action
Profile Image for Phillip Clark.
41 reviews1 follower
June 21, 2019
Fantastic continuation of the story. Could be read stand alone, but you'll want to buy every book if you do pick this one up :o)
181 reviews
June 26, 2019
A decent action read

Blood and guts and gunfire. Traitors and desperation. Survival seems unlikely. A good continuation of the series, left me curious to see what happens next.
69 reviews
July 8, 2019
Thoroughly enjoy D.J. Molles' writing style and books. Read the entire Remaining series in less than 4 week.
489 reviews7 followers
July 10, 2019
Entertaining Series Continues

There is plenty of action in all of the books in this series, and this is no exception. A solid effort in this genre.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.