Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2859 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-31
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

A new version of an old genre
To set the scene the world is infected by a plague of nanites which eat anything warm blooded that they come in contact with, but deactivate in areas where the air pressure is less than 70% that of sea level. This produces mountain top islands that are inhabited by those who have escaped the plague.

Plague Year is a novel variant on the old plague survivor genre that unlike many such stories is actually believable. On the negative side, Carlson's addiction to short sentences can irritating some times and the political parts of the story don't really work.

The book is strongest when it deals with how people cope with the situation, and weakest when it moves into politics and conspiracies but overall is a good read.

Exciting and stimulating
I really enjoyed this book. It was a damn good read. It ended a little fast but that's fine, books 2 and 3 are on their way. I hope the author can develop the plot ideas he has about the USA post nano plague, they are good ones.

Harrowing SF
Post-apocalyptic tales usually fall into one of two camps: the plucky lone survivor living hand-to-mouth, or the happy-go-lucky hippy commune who discover modern society was overrated. In Plague Year, Jeff Carlson, avoids both these tired tropes and paints, to my mind, a realistic portrayal of people coping as best they can in terrible circumstances.

Perhaps coping is too generous a word for the day-to-day existence that a band of strangers eke out on a cold, barren mountaintop east of San Francisco. Survive might be a better word. For although there is empathy and a community of sorts, there is also the brutal calculus of existence: if he eats, I don't. Despite these bursts of selfishness, what comes across is how very human these characters are. They make hard choices, and they suffer for it.

The second thread of the novel follows an astronaut who is aboard an international space station and has witnessed the devastation that the machine plague has wrecked on the world below. Unlike the grim physical quest for survival on Earth's high ground, her battle is a psychological one. As a nano-tech expert she is frantic to aid the fight against the machine plague, but how she might do this is unclear. Her confined unease is well depicted and provides a good contrast to the heart-in-mouth adventures of those below.

A "page-turner" in the best sense of the word, Plague Year presents a well-thought out, politically viable apocalyptic scenario, and marries it with compelling characters who you care about. Highly recommended.