Solar Plexus: Publisher's Pack

Solar Plexus, Books 1 & 2

By: Victor Zugg

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

Contains Solar Plexus and Near Total Eclipse, books one and two in the Solar Plexus series.

Solar Plexus, book 1:

Imagine traveling through a world determined to stop you.

A massive solar storm induced EMP of apocalyptic proportions knocks out power and fries circuits for most of the planet. Transportation, communications, and constraints on human nature are gone. Within hours, store shelves are empty; gangs and desperate people with guns rampage. Survival for those ill-equipped and unprepared will be short-lived. This will be the new normal for many months, possibly years.

Tiffany Conway sets out alone from Florida to join her parents in Ohio. She's young, strong, armed, and, with a Marine Corps background, skilled. She'll walk the entire distance if necessary.

Sam Pratt and Chet Evans, best friends and business partners, are luckier than most. Retired from the military, they too have skills. But they have something more — a running vehicle. With it, they set out from central Florida heading for the safety of Sam's cabin in the sparsely populated foothills of Tennessee.

With society crumbling, will they make it in one piece? Will they make it at all?

Near Total Eclipse, book 2:

Finding the resources needed to survive will be tough. Holding on to those resources will be tougher.

Three weeks after the mother of all solar storms, power is out, communications are down, and transportation is mostly non-existent. Fear and panic run rampant. Resources run scarce. Looting, rioting, and general mayhem advance as the dark side of humanity takes hold.

Retired Air Force Major Sam Pratt, along with his best friend, Chet Stevens, their recent traveling companion, Tiffany Conway, and her parents double down on their plan to wait out the apocalypse at Sam’s cabin in the foothills of Tennessee. Food is the first order of business. They’ll need plenty to survive the two years or more they expect it will take for the lights to return. Should Sam and his friends make do with what the land provides, or claim their fair share of what food remains?

Security is the second order of business. To defend against an expected onslaught of hungry people, Sam and his cadre form an alliance with the nearby town of Townsend. The population is small, manageable, and led by a select few with military experience. They anticipate no shortage of marauders willing to kill for what the town has. And Townsend, Tennessee, with its access to fresh water and miles of remote forest teeming with game and fish, is prime real estate for seemingly everyone with a gun. Sam and his friends have a decision to make. Stand and fight with the town, fall back to the cabin, or fade into the mountains?

Decisions have consequences, and mistakes are often counted with lost lives. Is survival in this post-apocalyptic world even feasible?

©2018 Victor Zugg (P)2020 Podium Audio

Struggle

I did like the main characters. The story was very interesting.
A little different from the normal EMP story. I would recommend this book series.

A good series

The series is good - a very good storyline with modest character development. William R. Forstchen wrote a trilogy with a similar storyline, and it is far superior.

Meh

The idea was better than the execution. Book 1 started strong then fizzled and book 2 picked up with the fizzle. Not much survival and mostly gun play.

Was expecting better

the book started our fairly well but then went down hill. For an EOTW book it seemed to be written from a liberal point of view. Help others, when you take things you need and let the bad people go only to let it bite you in the ass in the long run. It had the potential to be a great book but fell short.

Good story

This was a good story and performance. I didn’t like the actions of the main characters. They are supposed to be military veterans with security expertise. Yet they left enemy combatants live and later were attacked by them. That’s not a military mindset or plausible. The survival part of the story was enjoyable if you like apocalyptic fiction.

extremely repetitive

This book became hard to finish. it literally was survival battle after survival battle with not a lot of other meat in between. They were either fighting for food and other survival requirements or battle planning to manage scarce resources. it's just that there was nothing else to the story but that. We learn a few pertinent facts about some of the main characters, but very little. I just felt like it was a huge waste of time and kept waiting for the story and the characters to develop.

Disappointing

Have you ever gone to see a movie because you liked the director or someone in the cast only the movie sort of stunk? That's Solar Plexus for you. (BTW, Solar PLEXUS??? That's a human anatomical structure and has nothing to do with the sun. I realize it could be a play on words, probably is, but not a very good one. But I digress.) I got this on Audible because I really enjoyed three other Zugg books: the Ripple in Time series and Time Shift. Even though the whole idea of time running concurrently in two different times was weird to say the least, the stories were fast paced, engaging, and drew the reader in.

Solar Plexus repelled me like DEET does a mosquito. My problem, you may ask? Well, it might seem small, petty even, but let me supply an anaology. Have you ever tried to sleep when a faucet is dripping in the other room. Drip! Drip! Drip! You try to ignore it but...Drip! Drip! Drip! You bury your head in the pillow but somehow the sound (Drip! Drip! Drip!) worms its way into your ears. It drives you nuts. Sleep flees. The only thing you can think about is: Making. It. Stop.

Solar Plexus must have been self-published without the help of a professional editor, because an editor would have said what I am about to: Get a thesaurus and vary your vocabulary, for heaven's sake! The issue wasn't a pet phrase authors often employ. Think Jim Butcher's use of "showing teeth" or "spreading hands." (Zugg's is "lifting (one's) chin.") No. It was just one little word. Such a little thing, as Boromir observed as he slid into madness. (BTW, my use of "observed" was deliberate. I use a thesaurus.)

The offending word is "said." What's the problem with that, you may ask? It is repeated hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, with virtually no variation in vocabulary, Sam said. Chet said. Tiff said. Hank said. The bad guys said. Said, said, said, said, said, said, SAID! It's the dripping faucet thing. At first you simply notice it. Then it begins to distract you. Then it begins to annoy you. Eventually, every use of the word becomes a bee sting to your mind as you cry out like a lost soul in hell: "Use a synonym for the love of Pete!"

One can say (sure it works, if used sparingly), remark, observe, inquire, retort, opine, sneer, ask, request, exclaim, groan, etc. But no. Said, said, said, said, said, said, SAID! I feel like the poor schmuck in Poe's Tell-Tale Heart. Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!!!

Moving on, the narration is lackluster. The narrator, who is so utterly forgettable, that I can't recall his name and don't care enough to look it up, is bland. He makes no effort to vary his voice with different characters and his cadence and pitch rarely vary. Every sentence seems to end on the exact same note (if one can reduce speech to musical notes). As a result, the reading takes on an almost sing-song sound to it that combined with said, said, said, said, said, said, SAID leaves you longing for a novocaine-free root canal to bring some relief.

I endured to the end because the story was just interesting enough that I wanted to see how it ended. But it was painful. Oh, so painful.