After America

Reading this, I kept thinking about Rudyard Kipling. Birmingham is an excellent adventure writer with a great sfnal imagination who has totally bought into the Huntington “Clash of Civilizations” thesis. This is the second book in a series, which begins when an unknown force wipes out every living soul in a great teardrop shape covering most of the continental U.S. and significant portions of Mexico and Canada, so that what is spared of the U.S. is only Portland and surrounds, Hawai’i, Alaska, and Americans overseas including a large portion of the military. Among other things, this results in an Israeli nuclear first strike, an Indo-Pakistani nuclear conflict, and the expulsion of many dark-skinned immigrants (and second- and show more third-generation citizens) from the UK, all of which are background.

The narrative focuses on the President (a former civil engineer), a retired assassin brought back into active duty when someone tries to kill her husband and baby daughter, a South American immigrant trying to take advantage of the new U.S. settlement rules which award land to people willing to homestead, and a couple of other characters, including a Polish army officer gaining U.S. citizenship via military service and a child soldier brought to the U.S. to engage in jihad in the hotly contested/pirated/looted ruins of NYC. Basic message: the American dream is the right one; a lot of the people who epitomize the American dream are immigrants. Main bad guys: Muslims (there is one progressive Muslim character who helps the assassin). Secondary bad guys: white supremacist Americans from the breakaway Texas Republic. The President even says that they lost sight of the true American dream, so we know it’s true. Greens (a powerful party, given that Portland’s citizenry now represents a substantial percentage of America’s) take a whupping too—they ought to know that genetically engineered crops are the only hope now that the heartland is a wasteland. And Americans in the military are too politically correct, according to the Polish officer, uncomfortable with racial slurs even when they have no problems killing a group of African Muslims. I have the feeling that Birmingham, an Australian, is working through some sort of “I love humanity; it’s people I hate” thing with America/Americans.

On the one hand, Birmingham recognizes that every character has reasons for his (or occasionally her) beliefs and actions. Almost everyone does brutal things in order to survive; there are no innocents. On the other, Muslims are piratical rapists determined to wipe out all non-Muslims, so it’s pretty clear which non-innocents Birmingham thinks have the better claims. It was just hard for me to follow the adventures of the protagonists, which had plenty of drama, without thinking about all the other people—mostly from Africa and Asia—dying from nuclear fallout, uprooted from the lands of their birth, or otherwise devastated, and wondering about how their stories would have gone. show less

Birmingham's first entry into his three book series called Without Warning was tons of fun largely due to the premise and pace. And it ended with an exciting cliff-hanger that is only partly capitalized on in After America.

This second book picks up the action four years on in 2006. There is little explanation of what happened in that period other than that some areas that were impacted can now be re-settled and they have become hotly contested.

The author has tied up some plot loose ends created in the first book while focusing on the more developed and enjoyable characters. Having said that, I am having a hard time with The Echelon 'super agent' - the character seems unnecessary to this point.

Overall one has to hand it to Birmingham, show more he has created a complicated and scary new world that is intriguing to witness. I only ask that he focus even more in the third instalment and keep the action coming along with some explanation of the original event show less

Not as good as the first book, starts to get going in the second half and you know it's the middle of a trilogy (hopefully nothing more) when story-lines are nowhere near resolution with only 50 pages to go. I'm looking forward to the next one - it will be good to have some explanation of what caused The Wave in the first place.

way behind on notes -finished this weeks ago.

Ok, post apocalyptic fiction (most of population of North America suddenly dissolves and so do people who try to go there for a couple of years, then the effect disappears.

Kind of disappointing stereotyping of the Muslim world and some coincidences that are pretty WTF, but still a page turner. Birmingham's a guilty pleasure and this is very much a middle book sagging too.

I buy Birmingham for the cool ideas and the excellent initial book carrying out the premise but he gets a bit too into "the world is ending" apocalyptic results of his premises.

He also goes a little too far in having this ensemble cast and some of his characterizations of women annoy me.

After America by John Birmingham is about the US after an unexplained mass casualty event that wiped out large portions of the eastern and central US. There are several parallel plots that are only loosely tied together. One is about a battle to retake New York City from foreign looters and an Arab group trying to form a new homeland after devastation by the Israelis. One is about a group of Mormons and Mexican family trying to escape persecution by a rogue general who is running Texas. Another is about a spy/special ops agent on the trail of an enemy of the US.

It took a while to understand several of the plots. There must have been an earlier novel(s) that covered the immediate period after the mass casualty event. This made the novel show more a slow start while you figured out what was going on.

The end of the novel is a little bit anti-climatic. The three stories reach a conclusion, but it feels like there is a lot more story to be told. This probably the setup for a sequel to continue the story. show less

It took me ages to get into this book and remember who's who in the zoo. This meant that the read was a bit of a drag.

I thought there were too many story lines and they didn’t come together. Large parts of this book could have been completely excluded and it would have helped to make it a tighter more coherent read.

Plus there is the issue of it being part of series. I think all books, part of series or not, should stand on their own and this one doesn’t. It’s clearly leading to another book as there are many story lines that did not have a conclusion. The only good point is that the next book is not that far away so it might not be so hard to get into.

OK so reading the second book of a series without reading the first one isn't the best choice--it's what I did. On its own, it is a fine techno/political thriller. Nothing too memorable, but a fine read.