Year One by Nora Roberts

My Review
I’m obsessed with apocalypse fiction. (I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day with that confession. LOL!) I’ve been reading it for as long as I can remember. So, when a friend mentioned that Nora Roberts had a new apocalypse book out, I was intrigued. I mean, Nora writes wonderfully warm, rich romances . . . I couldn’t imagine her making the leap to the dark side of fiction with an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it story, and of course, I had to check it out.

So, what did I think? I was impressed. Year One holds its own with the very best of apocalypse fiction: Robert McCammon’s, Swan Song, Stephen King’s, The Stand, and any other number of really good apocalyptic books.

Nora Roberts is an absolute master storyteller. (She’s has, after all, published over 225 books.) This shouldn’t surprise any of her gad-zillion fans, but if you don’t read romance, you might not be that familiar with her. She, however, pulls off this story brilliantly – yes, I’m a bit jealous. Great characters – always the hallmark of good book – an excellent and compelling plot, and very strong writing.

Unless you hate the genre, and I do understand that end-of-the-world stories are not for everyone, I highly recommend you read, or listen (as I did) to Year One.

Back Cover Copy

It began on New Year’s Eve.

The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed—and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.
Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river—or in the ones you know and love the most.

As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.

In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.

The end has come. The beginning comes next.