Bookworm Speaks!- After the Republic

Bookworm Speaks!

After the Republic

By Frank L Williams 

Acquired: Word Slinger Publicity in exchange for an honest review

Series: After the Republic (Volume 1)

Paperback: 346 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Language: English

Subject: Fiction

****

The Story: Chaos. Conflict. Lawlessness. An uncertain future in a strange place. The American republic has crumbled. Joshua Winston, a reluctant leader who had hoped to enjoy a quiet, peaceful retirement from politics, is forced off of the sidelines. Now, he must lead a group of Americans determined to survive in the dangerous new world they face. He takes great pains to steer his group clear of the chaos that reigns after the republic, but fears that the conflict will inevitably find its way to them.

The Review: This one took a long time for Bookworm to get through. It sat on his shelf, half-read long after it had arrived in the mail. This story was boring and nothing new. 

Bookworm has flipped through the leaves of several books following this theme and they are all exactly the same. The government has collapsed under a liberal Presidency and thusly, true Americans finally have a use for all their handguns and assault rifles and can defend themselves from raiders and corrupt police officers all while keeping true to good ole Christian morals. 

Basically, every conservative Republican’s wet dream. 

Don’t worry, that above passage will be as far as Bookworm goes into political opinions, that’s a can of worms but nonetheless, this is not a good book. 

First of all the story itself is pretty ludicrous. There are like, thirty nuclear bombs smuggled into the United States. Bookworm is pretty sure that most of the civilized world keeps a close eye on the world’s nuclear arsenal. It would be hard enough to acquire one, much less a few dozen. While jihadists are a legitimate threat to world security, it has been like (at least in a mainstream fashion) for over a decade. As a result, in the entertainment world, they have become something of a cliche, the go-to villain. The Communists of the New Millennium. In other words…lazy. 

The book may have been a bit better if a more creative villain had been utilized, such as an alliance of white supremacists, modern militia, corrupt corporate leaders or even a billionaire new-order wannabe. That would have kinda fun.  

What we go was a text that was just weak, an excuse to list the author’s opinion in improving America and applying a thin veneer of story to make it more marketable. 

They are a few good moments in the book that mostly occur in the latter half. 

A favorite is when a woman named Caroline comes to the settlement and she turns out to be a vegetarian and recoils in disgust at being required to eat deer and bear meat. Those moments are actually pretty funny and the author deserves some credit for acknowledging that the apocalypse will be anything but comfortable. 

It also serves as a reminder off just how fragile our society really is. It is a vast interconnected web where one major catastrophe could easily cause to flounder if not completely fall apart. 

Take something as simple as a standard T-shirt. What’s it made off? Cotton for the material and dye for the color. Well…

First the cotton has to be grown to the ideal form, that requires agriculture and botany. Then there are the fertilizers and chemicals and the industries that maintain those. Then there is the harvesting, processing, packaging, sale, and transportation. Then there are to people who maintain the equipment, make the spare parts for the equipment, and acquire the raw materials for said parts, and that is just the first phase of making a simple t-shirt. 

When one thinks about it, it really boggles the mind just how much can be connected to a single product.  Literally a thousand people from a thousand industries are connected in some way towards things that are considered disposable. If a bomb or EMP were to occur in just the right place, a whole lot of suffering could be reaped. It is not a supply chain, its a supply web and the web is more delicate than we think.  

The book does not shy away from this possibility and conveys it in a realistic manner. However the weak story nullifies the majority of this lesson. Perhaps if the book had been simply non-fiction it might have been better received. 

Final Verdict: Bookworm is an American. Bookworm considers himself to be a patriot. But true patriotism is not blindly worshipping a flag or government like an all-merciful god. America has flaws but a true patriot works towards fixing them, not exalting the status quo. That is what this book does and it doesn’t even do that well. 

The majority of this book is jingoistic claptrap, with only a few good moments that spare it from getting a one star rating. 

Two Handguns out of Five

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