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prufrocks_necktie's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
mferrante83's review against another edition
4.0
Diver Richard Jane is off on a job repairing an oil rig when a mysterious cataclysm strikes seemingly reducing the world’s population (or at least England’s) to a bare handful of people. Escaping his remote location Jane makes his way back to England hopeing and believed that his son is still alive. Along the way he wanders through the devastated landscape that provides surprisingly limited clues into the truth of what happened. Jane meets other survivors along the way and when the totality of the destruction turns out to be only the beginning of the horror.
Full review here.
Full review here.
david_agranoff's review against another edition
5.0
My favorite sub-genre of horror novel is Post-apocalypse. I love the classics like Alas Babylon and On the beach as well as more modern classics like Swan Song, The Road and the Stand. I had this one on the shelf for a long time and I’m sorry it took me so long to get to it. I know this will sound like hyperbole but One is much darker than any of those other novels even McCarthy’s the Road. Much like my experience reading Swan Song my heart hurt for the character’s experiencing the events of the novel.
It doesn’t have the epic scope of Swan Song but in all the good ways this was a British Swan Song. That folks is my second favorite novel of all time so keep that in mind.
I went into this novel cold. I didn’t read much about the plot and for that I was glad I didn’t. If you trust me and you are a fan of post apocalypse novels then stop right here and order the book.
So in many ways ONE is a masterpiece of the subgenre. Ironically considering the title it is like two books starting off like a straight forward end of the world novel and then in the second half becoming an excellent supernatural horror novel that is really the novel I wanted Simon Clark’s Blood Crazy to be.
Jane, who is a father and deep sea diver is deep off the coast of Britian when the majority of the human race is cooked by a massive solar flame. The first half of the novel is a painful hike across the ash cover remains of a Scotland and England burnt to a crisp. Jane needs to make it back to London in an attempt to find his son, who in his heart he admits is likely dead. Like the McCarthy’s The Road this novel explores the nature of the relationship between Father and son. ONE however does this through a series of beautifully written letters/journals Jane keeps for his son as he survives.
In the second half of the novel Williams takes the story 5 years into the future. A disease that no one can understand is carried in the layer of ash that has coated the earth. It could be argued that the infected feral cannibal humans running around London know as Skinners in the novel are zombies. Not exactly and that sells Conrad Williams skill short. I never felt like I was reading a zombie novel, but something similar and more original.
This is my first novel by Conrad Williams but I am so impressed I plan to read everything as soon as I can get my hands on them. Best novel I have read all year and probably my second favorite reading experience behind Cody Goodfellow’s Repo Shark.
It doesn’t have the epic scope of Swan Song but in all the good ways this was a British Swan Song. That folks is my second favorite novel of all time so keep that in mind.
I went into this novel cold. I didn’t read much about the plot and for that I was glad I didn’t. If you trust me and you are a fan of post apocalypse novels then stop right here and order the book.
So in many ways ONE is a masterpiece of the subgenre. Ironically considering the title it is like two books starting off like a straight forward end of the world novel and then in the second half becoming an excellent supernatural horror novel that is really the novel I wanted Simon Clark’s Blood Crazy to be.
Jane, who is a father and deep sea diver is deep off the coast of Britian when the majority of the human race is cooked by a massive solar flame. The first half of the novel is a painful hike across the ash cover remains of a Scotland and England burnt to a crisp. Jane needs to make it back to London in an attempt to find his son, who in his heart he admits is likely dead. Like the McCarthy’s The Road this novel explores the nature of the relationship between Father and son. ONE however does this through a series of beautifully written letters/journals Jane keeps for his son as he survives.
In the second half of the novel Williams takes the story 5 years into the future. A disease that no one can understand is carried in the layer of ash that has coated the earth. It could be argued that the infected feral cannibal humans running around London know as Skinners in the novel are zombies. Not exactly and that sells Conrad Williams skill short. I never felt like I was reading a zombie novel, but something similar and more original.
This is my first novel by Conrad Williams but I am so impressed I plan to read everything as soon as I can get my hands on them. Best novel I have read all year and probably my second favorite reading experience behind Cody Goodfellow’s Repo Shark.
xterminal's review
4.0
Conrad Williams, One (Virgin Books, 2009)
I knew too much when I started this book, unfortunately. If you're reading this review, you probably already do as well. I say this because while the first half of the book is good, it's a different animal entire than the second half, and the final sentence of part one is one of those understated sucker punches that just works, but works so much better when you have no earthly idea it's coming. So on the off chance that you got here for some reason other than telling you “hey, you've gotta check out this completely awesome [x] novel!”, and if somehow this is the first review of it you stumbled on, I will caution you to read nothing else about the book before reading it, so you can get the full effect. Because of the radical shift in the book, I can't really talk about a large portion of what I'd like to, but preserving that jolt is more important. So think of this review as incomplete, if you like. But the short answer is “read it” anyway.
Plot: Richard Jane is a deep-sea diver at work on an oil rig in the North Sea when The Event occurs. No one is entirely sure what the Event is... at least, no one who survives it, and that number, as it turns out, is desperately few. Jane floats off in a submersible (to keep out of the atmosphere, which gives a new meaning to “acid rain”) and winds up on the northwest corner of Scotland. His son Stanley lives in London. Thus begins a trek across a blasted, dead UK. But not one that is completely dead, and as Jane continues on, he discovers clues as to what happened.
Not all of them, though. The book is left with a number of unanswered questions (and this is not a bad thing, given that there's really no way for him to have gotten them), though the central question of whether Stanley survived is resolved. Ironically, this is the one you could probably have figured out from the get-go, but that whole plotline kept me thinking about Ben Tripp's Rise Again (viz. 19Jan11 review) and how much better, overall, Williams handles it. I can't tell you about most of the rest of those questions (and the huge, gaping plot hole left by Jane's ruminations on the most important one) because they all have to do with that sucker punch at the end of part one, but let's say this is an [x] book that goes where not too many [x] books have gone previously, and I like that a great deal, as always.
(Note: there can be more than one value of [x], depending on your interpretation of the clues Williams salts the book with.)
Not the easiest book in the world to get ahold of in America, but a rewarding quest item for those who take the time to hunt it down. If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic survival horror, you'll want to check this out. *** ½
I knew too much when I started this book, unfortunately. If you're reading this review, you probably already do as well. I say this because while the first half of the book is good, it's a different animal entire than the second half, and the final sentence of part one is one of those understated sucker punches that just works, but works so much better when you have no earthly idea it's coming. So on the off chance that you got here for some reason other than telling you “hey, you've gotta check out this completely awesome [x] novel!”, and if somehow this is the first review of it you stumbled on, I will caution you to read nothing else about the book before reading it, so you can get the full effect. Because of the radical shift in the book, I can't really talk about a large portion of what I'd like to, but preserving that jolt is more important. So think of this review as incomplete, if you like. But the short answer is “read it” anyway.
Plot: Richard Jane is a deep-sea diver at work on an oil rig in the North Sea when The Event occurs. No one is entirely sure what the Event is... at least, no one who survives it, and that number, as it turns out, is desperately few. Jane floats off in a submersible (to keep out of the atmosphere, which gives a new meaning to “acid rain”) and winds up on the northwest corner of Scotland. His son Stanley lives in London. Thus begins a trek across a blasted, dead UK. But not one that is completely dead, and as Jane continues on, he discovers clues as to what happened.
Not all of them, though. The book is left with a number of unanswered questions (and this is not a bad thing, given that there's really no way for him to have gotten them), though the central question of whether Stanley survived is resolved. Ironically, this is the one you could probably have figured out from the get-go, but that whole plotline kept me thinking about Ben Tripp's Rise Again (viz. 19Jan11 review) and how much better, overall, Williams handles it. I can't tell you about most of the rest of those questions (and the huge, gaping plot hole left by Jane's ruminations on the most important one) because they all have to do with that sucker punch at the end of part one, but let's say this is an [x] book that goes where not too many [x] books have gone previously, and I like that a great deal, as always.
(Note: there can be more than one value of [x], depending on your interpretation of the clues Williams salts the book with.)
Not the easiest book in the world to get ahold of in America, but a rewarding quest item for those who take the time to hunt it down. If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic survival horror, you'll want to check this out. *** ½
silverthistle5b786's review
3.0
I'm not sure what to make of this.
It's gritty, unforgiving and brutal. What a nightmare.
But it isn't complete, I don't think. I understand that our 'hero' doesn't know what happened to cause the apocalypse, therefore we the reader don't know either, but there's more to it than that. We find out who the biggest threats are, and we're told how they came into being and what they're about. We're told what a struggle it is for humans to function and what makes things difficult to survive. We're even told how the rats have somehow thrived and taken on a new mantle of bold and fearless hive mentality. But there is a bit of cloak and dagger going on with the mysterious people with white scarfs and tattoo's and six fingers that seem to be lurking in the background. Who are they? Where did they come from? Are they good or bad? Why? What is their story? Should I pay them more attention. It's just doesn't add up.
At the end I'm left wondering what actually happened. I sometimes like a bit of ambiguity at the end of a story, where you wonder if it will all come right in the end, beyond the final page - but with this tale I'm actually wondering what happened DURING the final pages. Was it the human survivors that ran to the rescue? Or the mysterious white scarfs? Or a combination? Seriously, if you know, please let me in on it because it's annoying the hell out of me.
So, in summary......I liked it enough to keep turning pages but I'd have liked it more if I wasn't asked to guess about the significance of certain elements and their role in the story.
Read it, it's quite good. But then come back and fill me in on all the missing bits.
It's gritty, unforgiving and brutal. What a nightmare.
But it isn't complete, I don't think. I understand that our 'hero' doesn't know what happened to cause the apocalypse, therefore we the reader don't know either, but there's more to it than that. We find out who the biggest threats are, and we're told how they came into being and what they're about. We're told what a struggle it is for humans to function and what makes things difficult to survive. We're even told how the rats have somehow thrived and taken on a new mantle of bold and fearless hive mentality. But there is a bit of cloak and dagger going on with the mysterious people with white scarfs and tattoo's and six fingers that seem to be lurking in the background. Who are they? Where did they come from? Are they good or bad? Why? What is their story? Should I pay them more attention. It's just doesn't add up.
At the end I'm left wondering what actually happened. I sometimes like a bit of ambiguity at the end of a story, where you wonder if it will all come right in the end, beyond the final page - but with this tale I'm actually wondering what happened DURING the final pages. Was it the human survivors that ran to the rescue? Or the mysterious white scarfs? Or a combination? Seriously, if you know, please let me in on it because it's annoying the hell out of me.
So, in summary......I liked it enough to keep turning pages but I'd have liked it more if I wasn't asked to guess about the significance of certain elements and their role in the story.
Read it, it's quite good. But then come back and fill me in on all the missing bits.
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