Month: October 2023

It’s been a strange year and a bit of a “write-off” (pardon the pun) writing wise – blogs, books or anything else for that matter.

My Dad finally passed away in August. In many ways a relief for the whole family but also sad to witness the end of a long and rich life. He was 95 when he passed away peacefully with his family by his bedside.

I’ve also been recovering from my shoulder replacement in May and in September we went on a long driving holiday thorough France, Italy and Belgium. We have the scattering of the ashes and memorial for my Dad still to come in November and we are trying to support my Mum as best as we can albeit from a distance and involving fairly frequent trips up north. Then, before we know it Christmas will be upon us!

As a result of all of that, my head has not been in a great place for writing and I’ve done almost no marketing at all. I had hoped to finish Amenti Rising this year but its looking like this will now become my main writing goal for 2024!

But, I honestly feel as though I have turned a metaphorical corner since we got back from holiday and am ready to get going again. I’ve still been reading of course, and have recently finished The City Series by Sarah Lyons Fleming among other things. You can read my review below.

Book Review – The City Series by Sarah Lyons Fleming.

I read The City series after I had read The End of The World Series and the first 2 books in The Cascadia series. So, I suppose you could say that I’m officially a fan of Ms Lyons Fleming. Here, I’ve reviewed Mordacious, Peripeteia and Instauration as a series as it is essentially one long continuation of the same story and a parallel story to The End of the World Series.

The series tell the story from the perspective of Sylvie, a complicated young woman from a difficult background and Eric, the brother of Cassie from The End of the World series. Rather than escaping Brooklyn and New York like Cassie and her friends did, Sylvie remains trapped there and is living in Cassie’s old apartment. Eric, on the other hand, battles his way in to Brooklyn looking for Cassie and this is how the two main characters meet. The rest is history, as they say.

What I like about the books:

I love the ‘epic-ness’ of the story. These are very long books. Ms Lyons Fleming gives us almost 2000 pages of survival horror romance in this series.

I love the connections between the different books and series and the characters and places within them.

I love the use of real locations and how they are transformed in the apocalypse. I even found myself checking them out and tracking journeys on Google Maps.

The characters are what really drives my continued engagement with these books. They are authentic, imperfect and very, very likeable. It’s impossible not to care about what happens to them.

I like the way that the books provide a stream of useful knowledge and information about how to survive in an apocalypse, how to make masonry heaters, where to find water in a city, how to make a solar oven and so on. Very useful both for my own survival when the apocalypse comes and for fact checking my own writing on the subject.

I really like the fact that these books do not focus solely on violence and horror. Of course, this is there. It has to be, by the very nature of the theme. But it is not the main focus, and this is refreshing within the genre.

On top of all the above, the books are well-written and easy to read.

There is not much I don’t like about these books. They are engaging, simple stories that are well told.

If I had single teeny, tiny criticism it might be that sometimes I got a bit bored with some of the mundane conversations and seemingly pointless to the plot, everyday activities, and interactions. However, I suspect that is more about me and my impatience to find out what happens next than a serious criticism of the books. These sections are actually what make the readers care so much about the characters and their fates.

I’m looking forward to reading World Without, the third book in The Cascadia Series.