Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The author says this is intended to be a combination survival manual and novel. Both are bad. First, as a survival manual, there is a bunch advice that will get you sick or dead. As an example; "pasteurizing" water will NOT kill the spores of Giardia and, if you're in a warm climate, a whole host of other water-borne parasitic spores and eggs. Riding a bicycle without lights and full-speed on a moonless night on a road with unknown obstructions is an invitation to broken bones. Eating beans and corn as your sole diet will keep you going... until you develop scurvy in about a month. Example after wrong example; where did the author get all this? Then I realized; it's all from books. The author read some books and became a survival "expert". Didn't check his sources, either. It shows in the novel, too. One of the characters kills a poacher (who just killed a deer), then kills his wife and kid because "they no longer have their protector, it's the only merciful thing". After some doomsday philosophic babble, it's decided that it was the right thing to do. A few chapters later, it turns out that the protagonists have to go a kill "at least 20 deer" to thin the herd. This isn't only a moral issue (and bad moral judgments eventually have very bad consequences); these are the kind of people who are a danger to everyone. Another example: they go and attack a well-defended compound because they were spying on them and kill everyone (justification: they had slaves and were "bad"). No problems there, either; machine guns, military advice and a perfect defensive setup don't stop them because they have five SF super-soldiers who train them for a few days. And everyone they meet is either a helpless victim or an incompetent "bad" person who freezes in astonishment when they attack. Armchair survivalist, armchair general and really, really bad neighbor if a disaster happens. But really, really sure he knows what he's doing. If you follow this advice you won't last long; if the parasites don't kill you your neighbors will.