Noise

by Darin Bradley

This haunting debut from a brilliant new voice is sure to be as captivating as it is controversial, a shocking look at the imminent collapse of American civilization—and what will succeed it.
 
In the aftermath of the switch from analog to digital TV, an anarchic movement known as Salvage hijacks the unused airwaves. Mixed in with the static’s random noise are dire warnings of the imminent economic, political, and social collapse of civilization—and cold-blooded lessons on how to survive the fall and prosper in the harsh new order that will inevitably arise from the ashes of the old.

Hiram and Levi are two young men, former Scouts and veterans of countless Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Now, on the blood-drenched battlefields of university campuses, shopping malls, and gated communities, they will find themselves taking on new identities and new moralities as they lead a ragtag band of hackers and misfits to an all-but-mythical place called Amaranth, where a fragile future waits to be born.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Dystopia, Thriller, Suspense

222 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2010

About the author

Darin is the bestselling author of Noise, Chimpanzee, and Totem — and Light Both Foreign and Domestic, a collection of short fiction. He lives in Texas with his wife.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to buy a third copy of this book, because I keep giving it away.

The other reason is that this is a novel, right, but it really freaked me out. I started feeling that panicky feeling that I had during the gas shortage a year or so ago. What would I do if society really collapsed? Could I be violent if survival depended on it? Do I even have a plan to drink water beyond what I have in my pantry, much less securing my home and belongings and starting a new society with its own rules?

Phew. I'm not sure I'd be up for it. In Noise, Hiram and Levi have a plan ready for when their society collapses, based on the Salvage broadcasts they have been deciphering and documenting for a while. They call it The Book and it basically spells out how they will act in their own society. It also includes intentional dissociative behavior so that they can do what they need to do. Eep. It was disturbing, but wouldn't it be?

The ending was thought provoking because it doesn't answer all the questions I had. Reading the author's interview at the end of the book was helpful but no less distressing!

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without realizing it, Hiram and Levi had been in training for the Collapse most of their lives. They learned lessons in shop class, Boy Scouts, Renaissance Fairs, and all night sessions of Dungeons and Dragons. They began to receive instruction and train in earnest after television went all digital. On the unmonitored analog channels, 'Casters began sending out coded messages buried in the static, saying what to expect and how to prepare. Other messages were hidden in the wild style graffiti covering the walls of their college town somewhere in North Texas. When the Collapse occurred, Hiram and Levi would be among the prepared. The 'Casts had helped them assemble The Book, a sort of army training manuel for the survival of your Group. Following instructions Hiram and Levi already have established their Place in the country and stocked it with Salvage -- stolen stuff. They have planned an escape route.

I was reading Noise on Black Friday. I took a break after about fifty pages, turned on the computer to check email, and saw first thing the videos of ambulances driving the fallen away from Best Buys in Colorado. Then I read the story of the woman at the California Wall Mart who pepper sprayed her fellow shoppers to protect her xbox console. And all morning I had thought I was reading a novel.

What Hiram and Levi have been learning, what they have assembled in The Book, are lessons in ruthlessness. They will not be victims. They will take advantage of chaos. They will regard all those outside their Group as enemies, and they will neutralize them when necessary. They neutralize some unsuspecting National Guardsmen who have been called in to discourage the turmoil breaking out in malls and on the campus. They steal the NG's Humvee with its 50 caliber cannon. It comes in handy when dealing with disgruntled suburban males who don't like the look of what's going on. They pick up some followers before their escape from the city, but this crowd, only partially trained in the disciplines of the 'Casts, prove to be a mixed blessing. When one thirteen year old is caught trying to escape -- he wants to go home to his parents across town -- he is tied to a porch railing, judged, and neutralized. The Group has done the right thing. The kid knew too much.

Noise is an unsettling read. It follows its relentless logic for just 200 pages and gets the survivors of Hiram and Levi's group to their Place of safety. I am one of those movie watchers who always wonder why characters hit guards and bad guys over the head instead of killing, I mean, neutralizing them, but I also know there is always payback time. Much of what is in The Book makes an awful sort of sense, given the situation. But nobody's long-term prospects look good.

[Samuel Snoek-Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a damn fine novel. But it's not an easy novel to enjoy. Regardless your politics, your morality, your sense of community or self, you will find something to feel uncomfortable about in this book. The main characters are very hard to like, making decisions that at times seem appallingly inhuman. There are no heroes in this book. But even though we encounter plenty of antagonists, there are no real villains either. And that, ultimately, is both the most unsettling and the most brilliant aspect of this novel: In the apocalypse, there is no right or wrong but what we make, the only morality is what we construct in order to survive, and where other apocalyptic fiction often likes to present a false-anarchic free-for-all of amorality, Bradley is smart enough to show us human beings desperately trying to forge their necessary new morality. And the hardest part of reading this book, for me, was not that new morality -- a conflicted hodge-podge of anarchy and fascism, of utilitarianism and nihilism -- but how carefully, how seemingly sensibly, these characters present and live by their new morality. Some readers have complained that the main characters are heartless, one-note machines, flat stereotypes of the apocalyptic worldview present in this book, but I disagree: the background of Hiram is subtle, and of the other main characters is subtler, but it's there and it's plenty strong enough to explain the path these characters take, and Bradley, ingeniously, never judges them for it, never endorses or condemns their actions or their choices. He forces us, really, to forge our own morality as we read the book, in ways I don't see nearly often enough.

Some of the last third moves a bit fast for me (or perhaps the front third doesn't move fast enough?), so while the ending itself is excellent, I still wished there'd been another 30 or 40 pages, not because I felt like there is story missing here, but simply because Bradley had raised so many difficult questions for me and I wanted a little more time to deal with them while I read. But maybe that's the point: Hiram and Levi, for all their careful preparation, wind up necessarily facing questions they don't have time to answer, either.

Overall, a fantastic first novel, and I'm very much looking forward to Bradley's second.

[Mitchel Broussard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those novels that thinks its brilliant and smart, and just makes itself sound even more dumb by the page. The great premise of hidden messages embedded in the old analog signals no one uses anymore since the switch to digital television, is really awesome, but it never GOES anywhere. That's it. Okay, there's something about a secret town being set up to begin civilization anew or some shit, but it being never really explained, I felt blocked out from the plot entirely. Most of this book is just the main characters acting insanely paranoid and talking like fucking cultist or something. I swear, near the beginning of the book I thought it would all turn out that the two guys were just insane and it was all fake.

I think I would have rathered that, something real to grasp as to why I didn't like it. But, from the really uninteresting characters, to the super boring plot (despite being only 200 pages) I just didn't care anymore.

The writing also felt, i dunno, disjointed somehow. Like it would break off for no reason and go from Hiram and Levi raiding a drugstore to Hiram remembering trading baseball cards with his friends when he was like nine.

The mid-chapter breaks where pieces of Hiram's survival Book thing, i don't fucking know, were just grossly unnecessary to me. The English is so broken in these parts I flashed back to Pygmy for moments, and then just decided to skip them all together. They provide nothing to the story, and can be picked up from the dialog between the characters, anyway (if you care at all.) It just was kind of a difficult read as a whole.

Oh and for a book about the apocalypse, I felt really lost in the events that brought civilization crumbling down. I guess I'm just used to books being forthcoming in their explanations for the end of the world, this just sort of rubbed me the wrong way.

I gave it an extra star for the cool premise. Otherwise, pass.

[Thom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part road trip, part dark dystopia that starts in Denton, Texas. This story focuses on violent escape from collapsing society interspersed with flashbacks of a basically good kid. We don't find out what changed, and that leaves the story lifeless.

Hiram trains with his friend for an apocalypse coming soon, but they are not preppers. Their focus is The Book, a manifesto about establishing a new society after the Event. Interestingly, that event is warned about by Salvage, and anarchic group - the opposite focus of The Book. The story is told in timeline format with many flashbacks and not a lot of action. The apocalyptic focus reminds me of The Death of Grass, though that was a much better book.

One third of the novel's blurb points out how Salvage uses the unused analog airwaves to air their anarchic signal. They do, but that's not the focus - and this clever trick isn't explained beyond this mention. The characters are flat, and the only "growth" is between current day Hiram and his flashback self - not at all detailed. The ending is abrupt.

This is the first novel from Darin Bradley, and a Q&A in the back of my copy points out that the early Hiram is semi-autobiographical. Written in 2008, the Event feels a lot closer today. I just hope our future is a brighter than the one described here. 2½ stars.

[Megan Winkler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm gonna tick some people off with this review. I'm sorry, I just couldn't get into this book. It feels like an English major who really tried to emulate Fight Club or something and it just rubs me wrong. I get the premise, I understand what the author was conveying, I just can't jive with it.

Actually, it feels like I'm missing something - like the author had something very introspective to say and it just didn't translate to the page well.

On the other hand, there are several people who really loved it. It was recommended to me by a few people who also loved it. I think it's probably very polarizing and you either love it or hate it.

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s like being dumped in the middle of someone’s extremely home brewed RPG campaign and being told to “hang in there; it’ll start to make sense.” Only, the longer the game goes on, the less sense it makes. I’m sure if I shared any of the author’s assumptions about human nature, I’d have found something compelling in the story. Instead, I got increasingly frustrated at how alien the characters were while simultaneously presenting themselves as just people being people.

[zxvasdf · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea is really intriguing and frightening. Those of y'all who say you don't like it, I can understand it. I do. But it's obvious that the author's devoted considerable time into crafting a scenario in response to a socioeconomic fall. This is only one of the many possible approaches, but Bradley goes as far as to write an actual book outlining the steps to be taken as a reaction to said fall.

I think another writer could go onto a totally different direction with the analog waves piracy angle. Noise deals with the perspective of Hiram, whose entire ideology is firmly rooted in the successes and failures of his childhood. He leads a group, according to the rules in a book that he and his friend Levi have salvaged in bits and pieces from the pirated radio waves. The book is meant to be different for each group. (The one of the implausibilities here is that some people would be so quick to adjust their worldview to that of a written tome at the slightest whiff of trouble...)

The book advocates ruthlessness when it comes to the survival of the group, and the group's members undergo trials of morality in clashes with other groups with their own version of the book. Hiram finds his reality and that of the book drastically diverging, and struggles to cope, dopplering between the present and the past, to tease out the mirrored minor failures.

There is an interview with the author after the story, and it expands the book by giving you his insights and expectations in regards to the ideas prevalent. For you readers, it is a hit or a miss.

I wonder if Bradley's ever flirted with the possibility this book actually being used as a Book in the case of an actual socioeconomic collapse, as a tome shared by underground groups...

[Dutch Pearce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book - especially when you consider that what makes a young author's work good is exactly that it is flawed, it gives you a place to enter, to empathize with the writer, and - if you're like me - it gives you hope for your own promising but shitty writing. I've seen a lot of people complaining that the book never explains how the Event occurred. Ask me, that's one of the better parts of the book. Sometimes what's not written, what's omitted, is what makes great writing thrilling and suspenseful. Not to mention I think the Event was self-inflicted and, from that point, self-purveyed by Salvage. Really great read. The main narrative was sorta like A Clockwork Orange mixed with Snowcrash and Lord of the Flies, where the Book was like the book of Jesus' Revelations combined with the Anarchist cookbook or something. Very impressive debut by DB. Could've only come out of Texas.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book - fast read, engaging characters, ad, really what would *you* do in this situation? Sort of a "Clockwork Orange" and "Neuromancer" and the "Apocalypse" -- with all the fun, light comedy removed.

[Teresa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Badly written with a poor story line.

[Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me tell you what Darin Bradley has achieved with Noise.

He's taken an Event, perhaps socio-political, definitely economic, in its scope and placed a pair of friends, Hiram and Levi, in medias res in their small Texas town. See, they've seen the writing on the walls--the wildstyle tagging along with the hacked analog transmission from the nebulous collective known as Salvage Country--and realized this is the End, friends. With a small band armed with information, weapons, and new names, they know it's time to make it to Amaranth, their quasi-mythical retreat.

See, it's all about your Group having a Place. So says the Book. Darin has managed to weave the get-out-of-Dodge narrative for Hiram et. al an with apropos sections of the Book, the bible at the beginning of the end. Bradley has waxed meta with Book in situ, giving the audience a chance to following along with Hiram's Group as they leave their apartments, cross town, and find their Place in a world in breakdown mode--all with the Book as artifact. The narrative is further interspersed with flashbacks of Hiram's childhood, and the particularly resonant ones were of the Boy Scouting days, the leadership skills acquired and, perhaps, taken for granted until the young adult Hiram falls back on those selfsame skills and more.

No one is who they seem, either, among the major players. They've taken new names, new identities forged as they create a new Place in this new and broken world. Anyone's skills belong to the Group; the person becomes the new economy. The old world is dying, and no one--no one--speaks their old names or of their old lives.

The pacing is quick, maybe quicker than one might expect in a multilayered narrative such as Noise presents. However, Darin has more than made up for it with an understanding that clean prose and lyrical prose need not be padded prose. As far as characterization is concerned, you might have known a Hiram or a Levi. You might have played D& D and rolled some D20's with them.

But you probably never had to see them roll the hard six and run someone through with a sword or shoot them in the face.

Noise isn't about a ragtag band of survivors holing up and waiting it out. It's about the exodus, the egress from Eden and the concomitant Fall. It's about the subsuming of personal identity into the usefulness and forward progress of the group's identity. It's about letting your past drown in a pond. Your Orphean descent into the Underworld. Your Amaranth where you will put down new roots in a faraway place.

Darin gives the reader plenty of explode-y action and up-close-and-personal scenes one might expect of an apocalyptic novel, but one thing's for certain: the characters are the heart of this book, and after reading Noise, don't be surprised to find yourself echoing a mantra of the Group in Noise:

"You did the right thing."

Here's hoping this is the first of many sharp, smart, resonant novels from Darin Bradley.

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Noise was a fantastic read, and I disagree with the critics who want to know more details about the "event" in order to patch the narrative together. The thing is, it doesn't matter what "event" occurs. We're living in precarious times, and any number of shitty things could happen to topple over the foundations of our civilization. It's what you do (before and) after it happens that counts, and I think Noise does a great job of considering the intense moral crossroads without devolving into gore or into outright moralizing. The plot moves at a quick pace; the characters are fully-formed with traits both admirable and despicable. I don't feel like I need to love them or hate them; in this plot it doesn't matter. What matters is survival and doing what's right by your Group -- and as a reader, you feel yourself to be a secondary member of the surviving Group. You're along for the journey, for better or worse.

As an egghead, I got a kick out of all the nods to the old classics, especially to James Joyce and Ulysses. It was also pretty cool to read a book whose plot unfolds in the town of my alma mater. I could envision all the scenes geographically. An especially cool read for anyone from Denton, TX.

This story is totally plausible in the good old "not-so-distant-future" rubric, and it makes me remember I've been meaning to stock up on dried goods and weapons.

[KWinks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of thought went into this novel. I really did not like any of the characters, but to be fair, we were meeting them after a world ending event. I love the manifesto style of book within a book that shapes the story. I do wonder if there will be sequel, because the entire story is only two?three? days in the life of this group. I found Mary very interesting, Levi and Hiram had years to prepare for the event, Mary had minutes-and took to it like a duck to water.
I had some trouble keeping everyone's names straight, but I got into this and read it all in one shot. I think it is a must read for anyone who loves end of the world fiction.

[Veach Glines · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poor use of "language" and difficult to get-into. Interesting premise. Bad writing. Think of THE ROAD only written by a kid who has no idea how to write a compelling character or a suspenseful plot.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting dystopian novel about anarchy and societal collapse.

[Brigid · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't stay with it.

[Shamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

READ THIS.

NAOW.

Especially, of course, if you're a fan of smart, dark, thoughtful, funny, scary dystopian/postapocalyptic/how are we gonna survive?? fiction.

[Mason Vogel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Noise by Darin Bradley is a dystopian fiction novel set in a small town in Texas where burning buildings and violence are the norm. When television went from analog to digital, Salvage took control of the untapped airwaves and sent out survival information to their listeners. Their whole life Levi and Hiram had unknowingly prepared for the collapse of society, with Boy Scouts, shop class, and their Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. Bradley creates a chilling future of an apocalypse where corporations control people's lives, by commodifying the use of Noise and exploiting noise pollution.

The main characters Levi and Hiram are leaders of their survival group and authors of “The Book” which lays out a step-by-step process of how to survive the apocalyptic event. The other characters include many different members of the group who each have valuable skill sets that improve the group's survivability. The main characters were easy to follow, but it became hard to identify each character with all the additions to the group. I feel like the author could’ve added more context to how the characters got into the group and their characteristics. I enjoyed reading about Levi and Hiram with their survival knowledge and leadership skills.

The plot of Noise revolves around survival and freeing from the clenching grip of the controlling government. The group stockpiles weapons and journeys to find “The Place” where they can use it as a homestead and a base for fending off other groups. The group doesn’t shy away from violence because they always want to be the first to attack, that way there is no chance of ambush. They are forced to leave morals behind and use different strategies to cope with their actions, which is harder for some members of the group than others. I think the author did well at describing the realities of apocalyptic survival which includes doing things that were once thought immoral. I do wish that there was more action in the book as most of the book is lead-up and dialogue.

The novel explores several themes including capitalism, oppression and resistance, and technology and surveillance. The theme of capitalism is depicted through the privatization of noise which is used for profit. This is used to show how capitalism can sometimes profit at the expense of citizens' well-being. Oppression is shown through the regime's control of noise and they monopolize resources, manipulate information, and suppress dissent to maintain their dominance. This corporate control results in widespread inequality and exploitation, with the majority of the population living in poverty while a privileged few enjoy luxury and privilege. Hiram and Levi and their group of rebels fight back using violence to challenge the corporate enforcers. Technology and surveillance play a large role in the novel with the corporations using it to spy on and monitor the population. Drones and spy cameras are present surveilling public spaces and even private homes. This state of surveillance strikes fear and paranoia into the citizens warning them of the dangers of too much technological advancement. The themes explored really put fear into the reader as to what the future could hold. The book displayed warning signs of what corporate control could become if we let it.

Overall Noise depicts a dystopian society that is characterized by control and resistance. The main characters Levi and Hiram are well-developed throughout the novel as the book dives into their past experiences and present thoughts, the other characters are less developed as it gets hard to keep track of all the new characters that appear. The plot of the story is very detailed into the thought side of event survival, but there is less action than usual in dystopian novels. The book explores many important themes that catch the attention of the reader because of a chilling reality that may mirror the future of society. I enjoyed reading this novel because of its detailed account of survival and corporate control.

[S.R. Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

We've all read post-apocalyptic fiction, by now. The Road is old-hat in the year 2017, and all the grim, dystopic visions of the World After Us have been done to death. So I found it refreshing to read such a stylized, gripping novel following the Event, itself--a book that isn't post-apocalyptic, but briefly pre- and then inter-apocalyptic. That is, of course, if the event itself even is apocalyptic (a conclusion the book never quite reaches).

Noise is interesting not only in its approach to the apocalyptic Event itself, but also through its stylization, literary homages, and its dedication to its tale. The perspective of the book, being from a single, unreliable POV, creates countless loose-ends, lost threads, and asides, and doesn't bother to address all of them by the end. I loved it. Though the book delves into character history and perspective, it doesn't feel unnecessarily compelled to tie up every thread or address every aside--the story is about the unfolding events, their interpretations by the characters, and the physical and psychological road trip from pre- to post-apocalypse, and it doesn't tarry down other paths even as they open up. It gave the goings-ons a feeling of realism, in that reality is full of unexplored pathways, tetherless threads, and unexplained developments.

The stylized method of writing is also worthy of observation. The sentences are short, sometimes interspliced, self-referent, simple, stark, sharp, and strong. I really enjoyed Bradley's craft, particularly in examining chapters and paragraphs.

I certainly recommend the book for anyone in search of a new, interesting take on the apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic novel, or for anyone searching for another literary-adjacent genre adventure.

[Drkmac · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am surprised at the good reviews of this book. I thought it was difficult to follow, poorly constructed and did not make much sense. The overall idea of the book seemed good, but it didn't ever develop into a true story.

[Annette Murray · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yuk. After 40 pages of garbage, I gave up. It was poop ;-) Life is too short for poop.

[Nia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, lyrical, brilliant.

[Tom McCullough · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my type of thing. It failed to even attempt to interest anyone that was not reading to find something in it.

[Paschalis]

elibrary

[Bianka Tímári · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nem élvesztem csak kb 70 oldalig jutottam de már nem bírtam végig olvasni mert nagyon unalmas volt TvT

[João · Rating 4 out of 5]

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT FANTASY LITERATURE

Tell me if this doesn’t sound like a dream come true for those who regularly visit survivalist forums: In the near-future, the United States experiences a collapse of its economic institutions, which leads to the collapse of every social institution mankind has built to function as a society. All order has been destroyed, and from now on your survival against the challenges of nature, both human and not, depends on nothing but yourself. The classical dog-eat-dog world is in session.

Hiram, the protagonist in Darin Bradley’s debut novel Noise, has spent his formative years immersed in the group narratives that he and his friends have created through playing Dungeons & Dragons, defeating monsters and rescuing the disadvantaged, as knights are wont to do. But for Hiram, being a knight wasn’t something he was when you were transported into an imaginary world; it was his identity. Throughout his life, Hiram’s goal has been to find a model, a narrative, from which to make sense of the world around him, be it his family, his knighthood, or religion, but they all end up failing him.

I tried to convince myself once, when I was a teenager, that I felt God. Alone in the sanctuary, accompanying my mom on an evening errand to the church. I stared at the ceiling and drew deep breath as quickly as I could. I told our youth minister in his ball cap that I had felt Him. That I was blessed.
But in the end, it was only the wind and the rain, making noise in the darkness.

Now in college, before the collapse, Hiram and Levi, his best friend still from the days of D&D, have become part of Salvage, an underground pirate group that have taken hold of the old analog wavelengths to broadcast advice and plans for how to conduct yourself when the inevitable collapse comes. In a way, Salvage is just another group for Hiram to build his own identity around. He stops going to classes, starts spending his money on supplies that he and his eventual group will need to survive, and he and Levi begin to write The Book, a sort of instruction manual built from the disparaging sources of Salvage, and ranging from how to escape to your designated safe house, to how to set up the government of your new community. Above all, The Book emphasizes the need to take on a new identity and build a new narrative for yourself and your family, a narrative that will serve you for the changed times you will be living. You take on new names, and by extension you become a new self.

The collapse happens, and Hiram is one of the first to recognize it for what it is: the collapse of the old world; the beginning of a new one. Some believe it to be but a passing moment, that the institutions in place to protect them will spring up and protect those they’ve sworn to protect, forgetting that they also have their own families to think about and protect. Others, panicked and unprepared for the coming days, take to looting the stores around town for what they’ll need to survive. In one of the most haunting and revealing passages in Noise, Hiram and Levi hide behind bushes, watching as people leave the supermarket with supplies in hand. They put on masks as a way to disassociate their persona with the violence they are about to inflict. They wait for a target to exit the store; there’s no need to waste energy fighting other people for the things you want, potentially risking your life, when others can do it for you. Hiram emerges from the bushes and sees a female target, running. “I didn’t even stand. I just swung the sword into a pair of running shins.”

Bradley uses a stream-of-consciousness style that reminded me somewhat of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, and regularly jumps around in both time and place, emulating the inchoate thoughts going through Hiram’s mind as events beget memories, and memories beget more memories. As with most novels that employ this style, it was a bit confusing at first while I was still adapting my reading context to the novel’s, but once I got used to it I found that I couldn’t imagine it being written in any other way.

Noise was written, by Bradley’s own admission, before the economic crisis of 2008 hit its full swing, but it certainly feels like the direct answer to those events, and to the general mistrust in the modern economic-political landscape. I think I’ve put it best in this review’s tagline; Darin Bradley’s Noise is the Lord of the Flies for our modern times, and it certainly is a dystopic imagining that feels more possible, and therefore more relatable, than Golding’s.

I wouldn’t have noticed this book if Bradley’s newest novel, Chimpazee, hadn’t been included in Locus’ 2014 Recommended Reading List, and it’s a shame there isn’t more buzz surrounding both the book and its author. Noise is certainly a recommended read.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice to run into this new author with a creative twist on the sci fi theme of surviving an apocalypse. A couple of male teens in a medium-sized Texas city participate in a diffuse survival cult called Salvage. They communicate plans of preparation for the coming breakdown of civil order in code, both over bulletin boards and unused analog TV channels. They collaboratively create a manual, a how-to guide that essentially blends a Boy Scout type of handbook with Machiavellian and anarchic principles for a dog-eat-dog scenario following the collapse of civilization. As the latter reality begins to take place from mysterious causes, some of the cells of the cult speed the collapse and brutal competition for resources by blowing up infrastructure such as the electic system. The two friends assume leadership of a small group of other youth, and soon they begin enacting the principle that all others outside the group are the enemy. Together they work toward the distant goal of creating a self-sufficient agricultural community at a distant rural site. This quirky, dark tale is a quick imaginative read. A limitation lies in the lack of depth in the characters and in the excessive interruptions of narrative flow with long sections from the survival manual.�

[Chani · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not enjoy the writing style. It was schizophrenic and militant, and while this does probably fit the style of the novel, it was not something I enjoyed. I would have preferred characters a little bit less disturbed. Plus, the whole time I was unsure if all these things were really happening. I did step out of my enjoyed reading zone with this book, but it was just so all over the place, it didn't work. I also did not enjoy the random snippets from the main character's 'childhood.' They really had no place in the story; I think the author was just filling space or trying to keep it from being all about the 'war' but I would have preferred this. I did not get a real sense of the characters because I was only given their delusions. I never connected with the characters and the ended just left me disappointed. There was a serious lack of substance to the story and I don't feel I gained anything by reading it.

[Lianne Burwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started reading this book, I wasn't sure I'd finish it. It took almost a third of the book for it to really kick in.

'Hiram' and 'Levi' having been hanging on to everything coming from 'Salvage', which is loose pirate stations using old television airwaves after all the official networks move to digital. The two have gone from D&D nerds to preppers, waiting for the breakdown of society, compiling their version of 'The Book', based on Salvage.

And then, the breakdown happens. And they are trying to accumulate their people, and make it out of their university town to get to their 'Place'. It's bloody and it's anarchic, and it ends when the group reach their 'Place' (ie, where most books of this sort would barely have gotten started)

It was a short read, and once it got started, it was interesting, but that first third seriously detracted. I also wonder if we'll ever see another book from the writer, since it does have a bit of feel of 'the only book he has in him'.