While gripping, immersive and as bleak as an Irish November during a beer shortage, this dirge was not as fun as your average dystopia. It even turns the genre on its head a bit. There is none of thae survivalist excitement that plays out in so many standard fare dystopias like an RPG-find the ammo, the helicopter, the petrol station- drive on mostly unobstructed roads fast as you flee or flight your way to a tenuous survival. Free of the YA hero/ine trope of teenagers saving humanity with their improbably expert skills. It does not even veer into more hopeless dystopias, like such movies as Time of the Wolf or The Survivalist. It is an imagining terrifyingly prosaic and I did felt nothing but numb horror but could not stop reading it. The events seemed to unfold so rapidly, one day a fascist is elected, the next day, emergency powers, then civil war. Though this actually takes place over several years, the party gets real evil real fast, mainly through your standard 1984 sort of propaganda and the nationalism festering from some vague threat. Get out, you start yelling at the heroine from early on in the book, but also, you know you yourself would hesitate. maybe too long. I was so depressed afterward, so timely and terrifying a narrative went right along with the usual Christmas gloom.