Fringes of Darkness

by Jay Richard Able

A few years after society crumbled to an end, almost everyone had given up trying to figure out why or how it happened. By that time, we were all just trying to survive. Radios didn't work, food was an ever-increasing challenge to procure, the power was out everywhere, and none of it seemed to have a chance of getting better any time soon.

In the Midwest, a handful of would-be turf lords did what they could to keep order. Some were better than others. Most were not. For my part, my friends and I worked for one of them, doing what we could to get by, trying to stay out of the way.

We were good at what we did, which wasn't deliver the goods and don't ask questions. Easy enough.

Looking back now, all these years later, I should have known we didn't stand a chance.

265 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 19, 2021

Reviews

[Peewee Peeper]

DNF at 50%. It could have been great. I really enjoyed the world, the story and the direction it was taking, but the characters… Totally impossible to connect the slightest bit with any of them or even to simply understand them. I got the part where the humor and the lack of expressed feelings is a defense mechanism of some sort against what's happening, I truly did. However, the story is told from a first person POV, but the MC could have been totally absent for the matter, since he just describes what's happening almost like he wasn't there, like a mere spectator. As a consequence, some actions and reactions of the characters don't make any sense, especially Violet's. In addition, the "we don't know what we're doing and we don't care" thing gets really tiring at some point.