As I stated elsewhere, probably my favorite book of Robert McCammon’s, vying for first place with the more recent Matthew Corbett Series, was 1987′s Swan Song, and mostly that because it is a post-apocalyptic story – as far as I know, his only one. If you haven’t read Swan Song, then you are not a post-apocalyptic fiction aficionado.
So I was overjoyed to hear that he had a new post-apocalyptic story, The Border. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I’m sorry to say that I did not enjoy the story that much. It was okay, and readable, but not anywhere near as good as Swan Song, or most of his other books. I’m not sure what that was all about. But it was quite disappointing.
This story is about two alien races having a war that the Earth unfortunately gets in the way of, in the sense that we are on the “border of their skirmish”, thereby the name of the book. Our bad luck. So in their fight, the Earth gets decimated. And their technology is too much for us, so we can’t really fight back. Just duck our heads and the few survivors hope that they can stay out of the way, mostly via luck. But then there are some additional issues that cause the survivors additional problems, as well. So it doesn’t look good. Then some other stuff happens that is somewhat interesting, although, without giving any spoilers, one can’t help but wonder “why didn’t it happen sooner”? So that was an issue I had, as well. I suppose it could have “just been me”, but I just wasn’t able to get into the book and enjoy it like all of his others.
Additionally, the book had a least a dozen typos and related problems, which is odd. There were also some formatting problems for my Kindle. I have the original, so I don’t know if it was for all Kindles or just the older version.
And then, as I’ve also stated elsewhere, there is the price. Due to the above, the $10.00 (or so) price tag was WAY too high, especially for an e-book. So I actually feel a little ripped off. Which I never thought I would say about a Robert McCammon book.
Anyway, give it a try, especially if you are a Robert McCammon fan. Maybe you will disagree with me.