The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash that rendered all electronic devices and fuels inoperable. What follows is the most terrible global catastrophe in the history of the human race-and a Dark Age more universal and complete than could possibly be imagined.

Source: Amazon.com

I love post apocalyptic novels.  I eat them up as fast as I can find them, and was happy to see that there was a series of them that were highly regarded and was still ongoing.  How disappointed I was in the series though, it’s difficult to bring to words.  The topic of what exactly happened during “The Change” is only barely touched in the first half of the book, with the focus more on random groups of random people doing random things that have no impact or continuation from chapter to chapter, frequently jumping vast locations and apparent time frames, with giant leaps of story telling that the author was assuming everyone just knew.  Why would they know about these things?  Because they’ll tell you about it eventually and then it’ll all be clear.  This is the type of book that would give Pulp Fiction a run for it’s money in non-chronological story telling, and that’s not a positive aspect.  In movies you get visual queues and some things are pretty damn obvious without having to hold the audience’s hand (hey look, he’s not wearing his suit anymore, he’s wearing that unicorn shirt from the first scene, they must be connected!).

Bleh.  I try to never put a book down, but this one was too focused on groups that I just couldnt’ bring myself to care about, so I only made it about half way through before I threw in the towel.  I get the impression they’re never going to fill my need for figuring out “The Change” or explain why the laws of physics were suddenly changed world wide.  Even if they do get around to telling that part of the story, I’m sure I wouldn’t be happy with it.