Book Review – After the Event by T.A. Williams

Book Review – After the Event by T.A. Williams

This book is the first in a series, but I would consider it a novella rather than a full novel.  It is a quick read if you are looking to pick up something short to read.

In a single moment
hundreds of thousands of people died instantly,
every plane fell from the sky
and the world was plunged into darkness.
This became known as The Event.

The main character is Grant,  deadbeat dad whose alcoholism leads him to disappoint his family time and again.  When his wife passes away, he turns to alcohol to take away the pain and leaves his oldest son with the job of looking after his kids.  Then the disaster hits, known as “The Event”,  hinted to be an EMP.

One nice thing about this book is it had some scenes from the perspective of  the kids in the novel, however it primarily focused on their relationship with their dad, and not so much their reaction to the entire situation.   Towards the end, I just wanted to say hasn’t your dad proven himself to you YET?

I did feel that the kid’s reaction to the whole no electricity thing was a bit unrealistic.  They never complained about lack of television, the food situation or really seem to be affected by the disaster in any way shape or form, except for how it meant their relationship with their father evolved.  They literally took it in stride with not even a minor grumble.  I would have liked to have seen even some minor griping about video games or internet or something!

“Alec, where did all the lights go?” Alya asked as she flopped her head back on his lap.

He ran his hand gently through her hair and stared up into the dark night sky.  How did he answer a question in which he didn’t know the answer? Of course he hadn’t really spent much time pondering the question.  The first few days he had wondered but after that his attention had turned to trying to protect his family.

I felt some of the characters could have been fleshed out more, and it would have added a lot to the book.  Two neighbors could have had more detail added so that as a reader you are invested in them more.  As it is, even though they were vital to survival, we never really learned much about them and they both had numerous skills which could have taught the reader more about prepping.

The story did jump around a bit, which I guess should be expected for being novella length.  For example, they are preparing for winter then next chapter we are nearly through winter, without much explanation about how they survived, which I would have really liked to see, other than brief mentions of hunting and fishing.

Overall, worth a read, especially since they are pretty fast and can be read in a few hours.