All Is Silence: Desert Lands Book I (Deserted Lands 1) by Robert L. Slater

A New Adult Dystopian Novel published by Rocket Tears Press (01/05/14)

Summary:

“Back then she had been afraid of the future. Now she feared the present.” (Page. 254).

Almost everyone dies from a disease, but Lizzy, who is suicidal and is now more lonely than ever, has ironically, survived. After puttering around her neighborhood for days, she puts a message out for people to come find her and lo and behold they do. She even finds the number to her long lost father and gives him a ring. Is the world as empty as she thought or will the remaining survivors surprise her?

Keywords:

Apocalypse, Dog-Man, Death, Friends, Future, Survival, Father, Disease, Technology Still Works, Travel, Fighting, Guns, Weather, Empty Houses, Empty Neighborhood, Loneliness, Repopulation

My Review:

I love end of the world survival stories and this one was an easy read that showed another possibility to the dystopian literature. Like a combination of the Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Blackout by Stephanie Erickson, All is Silence follows a troubled girl who has been left behind by most of the world and clings to the few people left that she knows. When she finds that her estranged father is alive, she drops everything she has left to meet up with him, along with her old friends and a few new ones she finds during her journey.

This novel should have started at part two. Part one was all about Lizzie and her suicidal past. I think being a survivor during the apocalypse is enough to make any normal teen angsty and to give her a troubled past was not necessary. She was not very likable in part one. I was also confused as to how old she was. She didn’t graduate high school but her actions in her back story made me think she was an adult (sex and bad decisions), but her actions in the present day were not always smart and made me think she was a young teenager who is not worldly wise.

Some of the characters were one dimensional. Unlike Lizzie who has a long way to rise to meet the occasion, which she does now and then when she has to, her father and her friends are simple characters. Her father, especially, was disappointing as an adult. He acted like a child, with simple emotions.

Finally, stop using elevators! Every time (and there were quite a few) that characters got into elevators I would get so stressed out. At some point technology would start to break down entirely and elevators would stop working. Who in their right mind would get into one after 99% of the population has died and it’s been weeks since normal economy and production etc??

I thought the addition of the dog man to the traveling group was really cool and I really liked the aspect he brought to the end of the world.

This novel was published by Rocket Tears Press on January 5th, 2014 and is available on Amazon here.

TL;DR Star Rating: 3.50

Links for more information:

Robert L. Slater’s Website

Goodreads

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