SOJALS rating:

Good (3/5)

I first read this on the 10th November 2021.

This is the first volume of the "Breakers" series.

A global pandemic wipes out almost everyone. It's more lethal than the bubonic plague, the Black Death*. Some few live through it. Raymond and Mia James are a very lucky couple with both survive it. Walt Lawson also makes it through, but his girlfriend doesn't. So many billions have died that these are now desperate times, with civilisation in collapse. Even if you can survive the natural disasters as society falls apart, you still have to survive the human dangers. Only a few of the plague survivors will last through this phase.

Then the aliens arrive.

I was knocked out by this. I expected (from an eight-book-long series) that it would be an end-of-the-world story (though not sure how the series could stretch to so many volumes unless the world took a very long time to end) written for young adults. I assumed it would be either trite or dreary. Instead what I found was a very well-written, gripping, realistic, hard-edged story. I will say that it's not exactly the style of writing I like. I get the feeling there may be a lot of what I suppose one might call character development. and also there's very little exciting new tech. Well except for the alien tech, of course.

Once I finish Connie Willis' "The Doomsday Book"* I'll leap back into the Breakers series with volume 2, "Melt Down", and I admit I'm feeling some impatience but Willis' novel is astoundingly good and I just can't put that down until the end.

*Coincidently "The Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis is another story about pandemics, including the Black Death. Also coincidently - writing this during the second year of covid-19, It's a nice primer on how to properly handle epidemics.