{"id":3389,"date":"2018-11-19T21:32:26","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T21:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/?p=3389"},"modified":"2019-03-04T12:37:51","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T12:37:51","slug":"review-wake-me-after-the-apocalypse-by-jordan-rivet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/2018\/11\/review-wake-me-after-the-apocalypse-by-jordan-rivet\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Wake Me After The Apocalypse by Jordan Rivet"},"content":{"rendered":"

So let\u2019s get one thing straight right from the start – I don\u2019t read post-apocalypse books. Got that? Good. So\u2026 erm, what happened here? I made the mistake of reading the blurb, that\u2019s what happened, and instantly I was hooked. That\u2019s one powerful opening scene.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: there\u2019s a massive comet hurtling towards the earth which is going to devastate the whole planetary surface, destroying not just civilisation but pretty much all life forms. There\u2019ll then be a long perma-winter before plants start growing again. Humans are doomed, basically. But luckily, cryo-sleep technology has been invented, and there\u2019s enough time (just!) to build some underground storage facilities, train up some carefully chosen representatives of humanity and shut them away in cryo-tanks for two hundred years. Joanna wakes up, right on cue, and finds that she\u2019s the only survivor after a massive cave-in.<\/p>\n

So far, so intriguing, and this is right where the book starts, with the wake-up scene and slowly dawning realisation of the scale of the catastrophe. The first half of the book becomes the story of Joanna\u2019s struggle to survive, to escape the caved-in underground facility and then settle on the surface, with the aim of eventually connecting with other cryo-survivors later. Interspersed with this compelling story is the frankly much duller story of what happened before doomsday – how Joanna was chosen to be part of the cryo-program, the training she and her cohort underwent, the crumbling of civilisation outside the gates and her slowly burgeoning romance with cheery team leader Garrett.<\/p>\n

But eventually the \u2018before\u2019 part of the story is told, and the focus narrows down to the much more dramatic \u2018after\u2019, and there are several moments here that are well worth the price of admission. I confess that one or two aspects I\u2019d already sussed out, but not the whole of it, which gave the development of Joanna\u2019s character an unexpected depth. On the other hand, I was looking for some convoluted plot-level chicanery behind the scenes and in the end it all turned out to be a bit simpler and (dare I say it) less interesting than I\u2019d hoped. But that was just me looking for multiple layers of complexity, which perhaps may be developed in a later book, I don\u2019t know. It reads perfectly well as a stand-alone, but I\u2019d like to think that there\u2019s more to come.<\/p>\n

A fun story with lots of dramatic twists and turns, some interesting character challenges, both physical and mental, a feisty female lead and hooray for a tale where obstacles are overcome by intelligence and creativity rather than responding first with violence. Four stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So let\u2019s get one thing straight right from the start – I don\u2019t read post-apocalypse books. Got that? Good. So\u2026 erm, what happened here? I made the mistake of reading the blurb, that\u2019s what happened, and instantly I was hooked. That\u2019s one powerful opening scene. Here\u2019s the premise: there\u2019s a massive comet hurtling towards the earth which is going to devastate the whole planetary surface, destroying not just civilisation but pretty much all life forms. There\u2019ll then be a long perma-winter before plants start growing again. Humans are doomed, basically. But luckily, cryo-sleep technology has been invented, and there\u2019s enough time (just!) to build some underground storage facilities, train up some carefully chosen representatives of humanity and shut them away in cryo-tanks for two hundred years. Joanna wakes up, right on cue, and finds that she\u2019s the only survivor after a massive cave-in. So far, so intriguing, and this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63],"tags":[243],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3389"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3441,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389\/revisions\/3441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}