Well, the second Shriver book I've read because of a book club. I didn't detest this book as much as Kevin but I certainly didn't like it. First of all, there are about 50 pages of tedious dialog about the financial system which could be chopped out. I suppose she did lots of research about it and she wanted every bit of it in there, even if it had to be terrible conversations between an economics professor and a teenager (described many times as a economic autodidact). Really, if you were writing a post-apocalyptic novel about a comet hitting the Earth, you don't need to spend 50 pages talking about the physics, the trajectory, the history of the comet. Just smash it into the Earth and get on with it.

Then you have the 2nd half of the novel, is Shriver a Libertarian? There is certainly vast amounts of preaching about the evils of social society, taxation, gun control, etc. Much like the financial blah blah blah, it doesn't make the novel any more engaging. Having the 10 years later trip to Nevada just makes feel like there are two partially completed novels combined into one.

Lots of it just made me cringe. I believe there has already been much written about the novel's racism (i.e. The Lats - Mexicans, the Spanish speaking president who crashes the US into depression). The bigger sin for me was the laughably stupid future slang (boomerpops, Lats, treasury, etc.) that so many of the characters indulge in.

Perhaps there is an interesting novel in here somewhere, but for me there was far too much tedious garbage and Libertarian preaching to wade though. I did finish the novel, but only because it was a book group book. Otherwise, I doubt I would have made it much past the first 1/3rd.