me start by saying this was a really good story, Tidwell had an exceptional idea for a book when this started, However, that is where it ends, The book is not well written, or edited, Typos, missing words, and a few grammar issues, I'm not sure who is to blame for either, I just kept thinking if she and a good editor had taken more time or had been more thoughtful in the process, this could have been really, really good.
It readto melike the rough draft of her book instead of the finished product, This could have been a Whitney Houston song, but instead it was ayear old singing a Whitney song, Pretty decent apocalyptic story, a popular genre these days, No zombies,just a killer virus, a shadowy pseudo government, and Orwellian manipulations of the remaining population, Abby is one of a group who have been preparing for the time they know will come, when the virus has wiped out most of the world and the new army will come for the rest.
They flee the city and head, literally, for the hills, It's a life of hardship, survival and perpetual danger, long after the virus has largely spun itself out and the government, along with those they've indoctrinated, is the greater threat.
The novel spans aboutyears, jumping ahead a little choppily, but welltold overall, I really wasn't impressed with this story at all, I'm obviously not seeing what other reviewers saw in this and I was very disappointed with what I read,
We jump into the plot where some kind of virus is infecting and killing people and our hero MC Abby is running from it, trying to get to a safe place where she will be meeting a collection of friends.
It's not exactly clear what the virus is, how it spreads, what it does to the people who are infected, how it started.
. . in fact, in the opening part of the book we get no information about it at all, So I started the book feeling a bit lost at to what was actually happening,
Abby stops at a shop for supplies and has a run in with three 'evil teens', who she ends up killing.
This was confusing as I'm not really sure WHY they are evil, Are they infected with this mystery virus It sounds like it but why is it such a threat to Abby How contagious is it Are they fully human Are they about to go zombie or psycho or something Why were they such a threat that they had to be killed I'm not really sure to be honest.
I don't feel that things are being explained by the author, Either the author thinks they have been clear enough and don't need to say more, or it is a deliberate plot choice to keep the reader in the dark.
Whichever it is, I didn't like it much,
Even when we get to their safe compound, the fog of confusio remains, It's safe to assume that they are some kind of preppers who have met previously and discussed disaster plans, They are organising their camp to keep everyone safe, and various jobs are assigned to people based on their skills.
But what I don't like is that the compound leaders seem to be very vague about what was happening, keeping information from the other characters, meaning yet again the reader is wondering what we have not been told.
It is all way too vague,
For me, I like to begin a book knowing at least something about it, especially when it is some kind of virus.
I don't need to know everything about it but at the start, it seems important to have a background of what the virus is, how it starts and how it spreads.
It's vital to know how it spreads so you can see the danger in situations for the characters, If I don't know how it spreads or what it is, how can I feel the tension and excitement in each scenario that the characters face It just doesn't work.
The book also seems to be drifting into government conspiracy and a new evil political party storyline, Yeah ok, it's not my favourite plot but I wouldn't mind this if the basics were covered, I don't want to know about the complex conspiracy when I don't know anything about the virus yet, It was all mixed up and unorganised for me, It was vague, lacked any kind of cohesion or flow, and I wasn't impressed by the way the plot
was set out.
The characters also lacked depth and interest and I felt the plot sort of floated around without any direction,
Overall it was a massive disappointment and I wasn't inspired to finish it, THE ROAD meets EBOLA in this chillingly believable dystopian,
I finished reading Robin Tidwell's debut novel the day after I bought it at her launch party, Yep, it was that hard to put down,
Recently I've enjoyed reading a number of young adult dystopian novels, but REDUCED moved away from teenage romantic tropes into a deeper exploration of mature friendship and love after a manmade cataclysm destroys society as we know it.
Robin has an amazing feel for the Missouri backwoods, which she puts to good use as a handful of survivors are forced to live off the land.
She realistically depicts an uglier side of survival in a world where the highest law is protecting those you love.
I appreciated her portrayal of strong women and look forward to the next book in this series! Dystopian fiction isn't my usual genre, but even so I really enjoyed reading Reduced.
It was well written, with a solid storyline that was easy to follow, The characters were realistic, and readers can find themselves getting truly invested in their lives,
I read this book indays, because I literally could not put it down, Looking forward to the next one!! Not bad, not bad at all,
OK, maybe not a fullstar, but more than a,, so lets round it out to,
A few little hickups, such as missing words and a few typos, but the story itself was good.
Good setup, good premise, good charaterisation, . .
still what happens at the end of the world why, you go camping of course :
and if all else fail.
. . go back to living in caves,
of the population is "exterminated" from the face of the earth, . . but money still works doesn't that mean that the government in place actually work
Sure it'll have its downsides, and it'll have to take plenty of unpopular decisions.
. . but then again what government doesnt But seeing as the govmt was initially responsible for the extermination, I guess wanting to upend them would be justified.
still, a part of me still thinks that aot of the world's problems would go away if the population were decreased While there's no lack of dystopian fiction these days, on the bookshelves and on television, thanks to the recent zombie craze, Myan predictions, and endoftheworld scenarios playing out across all forms of media, most of these creative outlets focus on the horrors of the "whatif's.
" From flesh eating bacteria to alien invasions, extreme weather to civil unrest, our fears are usually taken to the extreme.
Robin Tidwell's first novel, Reduced, takes us in the opposite direction, Just as the title suggests, it reduces our post apocalyptic fears to what's more important but just as scary: the human condition.
In the book, we meet Abby, a young woman with no lack of survival skills and knowledge of the outdoors.
When a biological agent is being tested in the remote wilderness outside of St, Louis but quickly spreads out of control, Abby and her friends take shelter at an abandoned summer camp,
Government is being reshaped, abortion camps are being set up, the aging are being forced into death lines.
Abby and her cohorts focus on survival, but their limits are about to be tested again and again, both inside and outside their camp.
Tidwell teases both her readers and cast of characters with bits of knowledge, that while communication is becoming impossible at the camp, the reader is also "dying" to know just what's going on.
The fear of "not knowing" is what makes this such a frightening novel,
Though the conditions of the disease are horrible, Tidwell does not rely on the obvious of scenes to build intensity.
Sure, there's bloodshed and death practically in every chapter, but as I said before, this book is about the human condition.
Abby soon finds herself not just fending for herself, but also caring for a four year old girl while also trying to look out for her best friend.
There are long bouts of Abby exploring the surrounding woods on her own that will have you biting your nails off.
If you've ever gone out "exploring" a wooded trail all on your own, you know how your mind can play tricks on you.
You hear things. You look over your shoulder, You pick up your pace, just in case, Now put yourself in that scenario when civilization is out of control, The fear of the unknown rules supreme!
Reduced has the feel of Stephen King's epic, The Stand, with its large cast of characters and deadly illness.
It exposes us to the deep dark recesses of the outdoors and man's strengths and weaknesses in it like James Dickey's celebrated novel, Deliverance.
And yet Tidwell makes this subgenre her own by taking full advantage of her backyard setting in the city of St.
Louis.
In the end, it is far from a predictable horror novel, It stands alone as a story of survival and the importance of human relationships and how they will be tested should we ever find ourselves in a society spiraling out of our control.
.
Seize Reduced (Reduced #1) Sketched By Robin Tidwell Distributed As Interactive EBook
Robin Tidwell