Shelter: The Aftermath Book One

Shelter by Dave Hutchinson

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3ROBVSNYKV926?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

On some unspecified day in the near future, humanity is going to have a bad day. According to Dave Hutchinson, civilization will end when the “Sisters” - the pieces of a comet - impact the Earth out of left field. No one saw it coming. It ringed the Earth in destruction. In the aftermath, many people never knew what happened.

What they knew was that civilization was over and that they had to flee the cities, taking disorder with them.

This book starts approximately one hundred years later. The setting is southern England, which in 2230 (approximately) has reverted to a level that would have been recognizable to Alfred the Great. Small distances are vast distances regulated by the speed of horses and the actions of highwaymen. For people on the coast, Oxford is a place known only through rumors.

On the other hand, some places did better than other places. The naval base at Portsmouth kept its assets and has put itself together as a regional power. Portsmouth is beginning to reach out to rest of the world and find out what is going on in southern England through infiltration agents.

What I particularly liked about this book was the setting. Hutchinson does a great job of showing what a civilization knocked to its knees and rebuilding would look like. Technology includes guns and other items scavenged from the prior world. Human communities are holding on by their fingernails. Starvation is a constant threat because the Sister generated a long term “nuclear winter.”

Hutchinson divides his attention between a farming community in southern England and the actions of a Portsmouth infiltrator. The reader watches the farming community spiral into a factional war as one murder is paid back by another. A human monster stalks the killing field getting revenge for his marginal existence.

Hutchinson is an excellent writer, and I enjoyed the ride, but I wondered what this book was all about. I think the problem is that we don't see the story through to its end. We see the cycle of violence in the farming community ended - along with an external threat - and there seems to be the intimation the Portsmouth will include the community in its sphere of influence. However, we don't go there completely. Likewise, we don't get closure on the external threat or the deranged killer.

This is voume 1 of what appears to be a two part series. Perhaps these problems will be addressed in the next book?