After: The Shock by Scott Nicholson

I seem to be on a run of post-apocalyptic novels in my queue of late. Most of them have been of the zombie variety. In this novel, the culprit that leads to the demise of the human race is a series of solar flares, which wipes out most of humanity. Of the survivors, there are those who remain normal –although of seriously questionable character—and the zapheads, who have little humanity left and are basically mindless, violent people, whose sole purpose seems to be to injure and kill. The story follows several different groups of survivors, who are interlinked in various ways. These are the early days of the apocalypse and the people are still trying to figure things out and seek out safety.



Because there is so much post-apocalyptic fiction, movies, and television shows out there, one of the biggest challenges for an author is to distinguish their series from all of the other ones out there. On the plus side, the idea behind the apocalypse is pretty good. Although solar flares ending humanity is not that uncommon, I like what the author did in terms of having zapheads along with regular humans. The other interesting thing happening is that the zapheads seem to be evolving, getting some level of communication and coordination among them, while at times, it seems like the humans are devolving. The writing is professional and has a good flow to it. The only trouble spot is that there are too many unlikeable characters in the mix. Pete and Campbell are two college kids who are more into drinking and drugs than surviving. In addition, the characters of Arnoff and Donnie are idiots. These characters need a bit of work. Fortunately, there are good characters to balance them out. All in all, this was a good start to a series and I will look forward to reading more.