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- Nova's American Apocalypse: The Collapse Begins Reviewed By Sandra Shwayder Sanchez Of Bookpleasures.com
Nova's American Apocalypse: The Collapse Begins Reviewed By Sandra Shwayder Sanchez Of Bookpleasures.com
- By Sandra Shwayder Sanchez
- Published April 25, 2011
- GENERAL FICTION REVIEWS
Sandra Shwayder Sanchez
Reviewer Sandra Shwayder Sanchez: Sandra is
a retired attorney and co-founder of a small non-profit publishing
collective: The Wessex Collective with whom she has published two short fiction collections
(A Mile in These Shoes and Three Novellas) and one
novel, Stillbird.
Her most recent novel, The Secret of A Long Journey is soon to be released by Floricanto Press in April 2012 and her first novel, The Nun, originally published by Plain View Press in 1992 is being  reissued in a 2nd Edition with additional material by PVP in March 2012.
Publisher: Ulysses Press
ISBN: 9781569759035
Click Here To Purchase American Apocalypse: The Collapse Begins
Told
from the perspective of a young man, college educated with no
prospects (duh) during a time of collapse in the not too distant
future (for some folks, I guess we could make that the present). He
evolves from an astute albeit somewhat sarcastic commentator on
social injustice and political ineptitude to a vigilante killer
preventing and sometimes avenging crimes. His first kill is rash and
accidentally successful when he guts a pedophile with a gardening
trowel. He gets off on knowing that because of him, the guy will
never hurt another kid. Later, after being beaten by a gang within an
inch of his life, he undergoes some training before joining forces
with an unofficial policeman.
The narrator’s
descriptions of the hero’s kills are graphically violent and could
be offensive in a different context. But even as I warn readers to
expect a lot of violence, I would ask readers to consider this
question: should “violence” be defined by its method or by its
intended results? And having asked that I would then ask readers to
examine how some powerful and greedy people wielding pens instead of
swords can drive people from their homes, deprive workers of their
livelihoods (or exploit them by overworking and underpaying them) and
send yet others off to wield or die by that proverbial sword, (or
just come home from foreign wars damaged and neglected), all
for the purpose of obscene profits at the expense of working people.
Are these not acts of violence given the results for their victims?
American Apocalypse is an all too realistic
portrait of what awaits a nation at the end of a slippery slope
created by a government that caves in to or, worse, actively caters,
to the immorally greedy corporate interests that manage to loot the
people of America without resort to guns or swords, their weapon of
choice being the simple power of wealth. We embarked upon this
slippery slope decades ago and there were minor ups and downs and
delays until W kicked us over a cliff and a climb back up from
the current abyss will be arduous if even possible. Maybe the
chickens who routinely vote for Colonel Sanders need to read this
book and think about what they really want from our elected leaders.
I highly recommend this book be read immediately before or after a
(re)reading of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The combination packs a serious intellectual wallop. I
understand there is a sequel and I am eager to read it. This author,
in telling like it like it could be, is also reminding us of how it
is.
Click Here To Purchase American Apocalypse: The Collapse Begins