Going Home

A Novel

By: A. American

Narrated by: Duke Fontaine

Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's Summary

If society collapsed, could you survive?

When Morgan Carter's car breaks down 250 miles from his home, he figures his weekend plans are ruined. But things are about to get much, much worse: The country's power grid has collapsed. There is no electricity, no running water, no Internet, and no way to know when normalcy will be restored - if it ever will be.

An avid survivalist, Morgan takes to the road with his prepper pack on his back. During the grueling trek from Tallahassee to his home in Lake County, chaos threatens his every step but Morgan is hell-bent on getting home to his wife and daughters - and he'll do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Fans of James Wesley Rawles, William R. Forstchen's One Second After, and The End by G. Michael Hopf will revel in A. American's apocalyptic tale.

©2013 A. American (P)2013 Penguin Audiobooks

Intriguing "prepper" story, terrible writing.

After reading this story, I decided to write a review. I sat down at my desk, and turned on my HP Pavillion desktop computer, running 32 bit Windows 7 Pro on an Intel Core i5 650 at 3.33 GHz. I turned on the computer, listening to the whir of the fans and the clicking of hard drive starting up. When the screen came up, I logged in with my regular user account, rather than the admin account I created for emergencies. As I did so, I thought about my other computer, my favorite actually, that is a Dell desktop with a Phenom II motherboard running Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon with a modified desktop, a custom dock and 4 standard workspaces. Once the OS booted, I saw that I had 14 new emails, many of which could be about work. Then I ran Chrome version 32.0.1700.107 m, as I like it better than IE 11 or Firefox, and I logged into Audible.com. I navigated to my library and found the option to review this book there. I considered what the best headline would be for quite a while, not knowing how to capture my feelings about this book in one statement. I finally arrived at "Intriguing 'prepper' story, terrible writing", and typed it in. And, so I wrote a review in the style of writing that the book is written in - with waaaaaay too much irrelevant detail and technical jargon that bogs down the whole experience immeasurably.

I did enjoy the story somewhat, and find it an interesting "what if" about the cause and aftermath of the downfall of our technological society, but that was in spite of the very poor quality of the writing. The story unfortunately has the feel of a first draft rushed to publication (maybe to get it out there before the electricity stops flowing), which needs some hefty revising to become even moderately polished - like a great idea for a story that hasn't yet come to fruition. There were times when I didn't want to put it down, but there were also at least as many when I yelled "Come on!! DO something! I am not interested in what brand of knife that guy was carrying, what the specifications of his rope are, or how he cooked breakfast, and I don't even know what an SVG is!!" at my car stereo.

If you like exploring the concept of what may happen when the lights go out for good, don't mind your head spinning a bit from a barrage thinly veiled product endorsements, can deal with some right-leaning anti-government paranoia*, and can hold your nose through the rough writing, I recommend this book. It fits into the genre including The Road and One Second After, although it is at the opposite end of the quality scale for writing. As the first in a series, it would get about 3 stars as well, as I am intrigued to check out book 2, although I'm not willing to pay full price or to spend a whole credit on it - I'll wait for the next sale.

Enjoy! And, someone tell me what the hell an SVG is, please.

(* which, I think, is fairly healthy and well-deserved in this day and age)

a story as subtle and creative as the pen name

What would have made Going Home better?

I've listened to plenty of bad books and plenty that have been badly narrated, but never until now have both those qualities been so successfully combined. I've never left a bad review for a book before (or any review until this, to be fair), but the only thing more clumsy than the storytelling in this tale is the almost laughably awful narration.

At first this combination had me convinced that Duke Fontaine and A. American had to be the same person, but the narrator misses or mispronounces so many obvious references (who refers to NAPA auto parts as N-A-P-A?? There aren't periods in NAPA!!) that the only offensively patronizing explanation I can think of is that the author and narrator both benefitted from the same 5th grade education in english and literature following their emergence from under massive boulders. I haven't looked at the actual text, but either the comma key on the author's keyboard is stuck down or the narrator can't get past six or seven words without a comma-implying pause to check his pulse.

I'd take issue with the casual xenophobia and racism (dot not feather indian convenience store owners; post EMP bombing of Israel by the ragheads; Mexican gangs running amok in Phoenix), sexism (annoying helpless screaming women who cant handle a weapon and who listen when told to shut the f*** up), homophobia (the three muskiqueers), obliviously arrogant morally superior white male characters and offensively stereotyped black characters, but I can't be convinced the author actually is intelligent or self aware enough to know any better.

You should definitely give this book a listen if 1) you are looking to be bombarded with undefined acronyms for brand-named gear manufactured by companies whose PR departments would almost certainly take issue with their products being referenced in this book, and/or 2) you are interested in comically low brow disaster stories that you only keep listening to because you can't quite believe what you're hearing, and/or 3) you are a white guy who voted for trump because dammit its your right to be casually offensive to everyone else.

What do you think your next listen will be?

not any more of this series. how did this get past one book???

What didn’t you like about Duke Fontaine’s performance?

It was pretty much the worst. Please never let George Guidall or Jim Dale or Patrick Tull (rip) hear this because I'm pretty sure they'd shake their heads in bewilderment and immediately retire from the whole narration thing.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

none that come to mind but i promise to think about it.

Any additional comments?

yikes.

This is how we wash the dishes...

Funny book this. As mentioned by other reviewers, there's enough 'gear glee' to make you think the author works for the marketing department of some survivalist supplier. But more than that, just as the story starts to get going we pause to wash the dishes, pack the backpack, make dinner, wash dirty clothes, make hot chocolate, wash the dishes again, put on socks, tie our shoes, make the bed…seriously, most of us know how to do these things.

Really bad writing, so I think the narrator was actually doing the best with what he had, and the politics will be off-putting to some. I hung in till the end though, so author must be doing something right. I'd be interested to see if book two has the same attention to minutia. Oh, no wait: That would mean I have to buy it.

Cliche + drivel + preppie porn = Going Home

Our noble, reluctant, honest, all-around just a good guy — ain’t he? — heroic protagonist must get home. Will he? Is the book crammed with brand name prepper gadgetry that you are unlikely to have ever heard of? Is his wife beautiful? Does she know how to handle a gun? Does she let a man be a man? Does he cook pancakes for the pig-tail bedecked little rapscallions worriedly awaiting him? Will he be forced to protect the innocent against cliched bad guys of all races? Will he team up with equally cliched good guys? Will women just be allowed to be women, darn it? Will he be rescued by salty ex-master sergeants who will themselves be reluctantly — wait? Is that reluctance? - forced to take on big brother? Will stereotyped aw-shucks but just complex enough characters abound? Will you want to hear a sentence starting with a gerund ever again? You decide.

Fun book can't wait for more!

My new favorite post apocalypse series! With a good blend of action, plot development and practical prepping information “Going Home” is a fun read which draws you in and keeps you interested from start to finish. Although it’s not, the writing made me thing of more of a journal being told (mostly) through the eyes of the main character Morgan. It has a great bit of detail and takes you through his thought process making it easy to get engrossed in the story. The characters are a bit static and the author’s ideology comes through loud and clear, but the story is just too good. Also, I’d like to give a big thanks to the author for writing a series where the story continues from book to book but makes each one stand alone! I am certainly going on to the next book but with this one being wrapped up so nicely I don’t feel as if I’m being made to read the next book to get the whole story!

The narration was very good!

Still intense the 2nd time around!

If I enjoy a book, I usually listen two or three times. I did this a couple of years ago when I first found this one.

I just now picked it up again, and it is still a thriller! I will have to listen to the whole series again now.

A American did his homework and created an intense tale.

Promising, but.....

I just finished Book 4 which should be the final of this series, I hope. Book 1 started with the protagonist being quickly thrust into a grid down, lights out situation while stranded hundred of miles from home. At first I thought this was going to be a dud, but the more I listened the more compelled I was to continue with this journey. I know that most listeners will find it distracting at how the author describes in detail the survival supplies and gear that the lead character (Morgan) uses along the way, but I found it to be somewhat informative and well thought out. Obviously things go from bad to worse and Morgan encounters drunk rednecks, thugs, bandits and eventually, the government. Although it's becoming more common in the survivalist book genre, this is the first series I've listened to that seems to latch on to Alex Jones notions of a hostel national takeover by government agencies such as DHS, FEMA, IRS and others. It's a sobering notion to consider and this first book really convinced me to buy Book 2 and find out what happens.

Book 1 wasn't great. The narration is mediocre at best and some of the subplots were too formulaic. Books 2, 3 and 4 didn't improve in the narration department and took things too far by introducing characters and subplots that just became stupid. Some of the dialog between characters was idiotic. Book 4 especially. In fact, Book 4 had quality of writing you'd expect from a teenager. I totally lost interest in the characters and story. It is obvious that the author was stumbling around trying to build a suitable story and explain why the world fell apart. Book 1 set a standard that Book 2 barely met and the other books completely missed. Books 3 and 4 should have been condensed into one book. They don't deserve your credits like the first two.

Several flaws

This one was difficult to finish and I'm glad it's over. The narrator does a not so great job with the delivery of this text, reading with a herky jerky style that made me really aware that he was reading vs allowing me to concentrate on the story. I think the author just wanted to write about survival gadgets. There's a lot of detail about gadgets and guns but the plot is really lacking for substance. Overall, I didn't care for it and found myself just wanting it to be over vs see any sort of resolution.

Loved it!

What a great book! For those of us out there that enjoy a good SHTF novel...this is a good one. Not as good as One Second After in my opinion, but still a very good book. This one was a little different from a lot of the others in that the story follows a few people as they attempt to get home after everything falls apart. They are stranded a few hundred miles form home and the journey to get home is what this book is about.

I think that some of the situations, and the short amount of time it takes for society to completely degrade, might be a little bit of a stretch...but then again, who knows. We, as a society, MUST spend some time and make plans for how we are going to handle these kinds of possible scenarios. The thing that I really like about these kind of books, is that IT COULD REALLY HAPPEN! When you read this book, it's almost like you are reading a self-help book. I love to take the situations that the characters are put into and think about how I would handle them. Would I do something different....would I be able to, emotionally or physically, do what needs to be done. It is something that I think about a lot, and personally prepare for. LOVE IT!

The narrator also did a fine job. Great, consistent characterization and voicing. This one is a winner!

Prepper novel for hate-the-government types

I seem to be on a survivalist reading kick lately, enjoying various books about TEOTWAWKI scenarios. One thing that quickly becomes apparent is that survivalist books and those who write them tend to be of a particular political bent. It is stronger in some than in others, but let's just say there are not a lot of people voting for Obama who write books about how the government is going to collapse and the key to survival is stashing guns and silver.

"A. American" is clearly making a statement with the very choice of pseudonym, but Going Home doesn't really get up on a soapbox until the end.

Instead, the first part of the book is about Morgan Carter's trip home after an EMP device shuts down his car and the power grid. He is in rural Florida when it happens — setting survivalist novels in Florida or North Carolina seems to be awfully popular. Certainly it's easier to explain someone carrying a gun around, as opposed to a survivalist novel set in New York or Maryland.

Morgan Carter is a prepper, and the chapters with Morgan are narrated from a first-person POV, so he goes into great detail describing the contents of his bug-out bag, the equipment he has, his survival tactics as he begins hiking home. Later he meets up with a naive college girl, another shotgun-toting survivor named Thad (obligatory Big Black Friend), and then some ex-army guys, and the novel becomes a little disjointed as it alternates between their viewpoints as they go their separate ways.

Mostly there is a lot of talk about gear and prepper basics, obviously intended to enlist the audience's interest. There are some deadly encounters with the usual sorts of low-lives whom you'd expect to turn orc when the grid goes down. As a survival story, it's not quite as compelling as One Second After or Alas, Babylon or Dies the Fire because all those books (besides being somewhat better written) are about the survival of communities, whereas Going Home is mostly a collection of individual survival stories. However, it does illustrate some of the issues an individual might have, being caught on one's own in a SHTF scenario, though the author makes it a lot easier for his protagonists by letting them all start out heavily armed.

Now, as I noted, a certain mistrust of the government and antipathy for dependent city-dwellers is at the core of most of these survivalist novels. "A. American" keeps this in check for most of the book, with Morgan making only a few comments now and then about screwed the unprepared are going to be and the observation that people turn "collectivist" awfully fast when they run out of stuff.

The end of the book, however, reveals who the true culprits behind the EMP device were. Well, President Obama is never mentioned by name, but let's just say this is a book that will appeal to those who believe in the NWO's black helicopters and FEMA camps.

A review for the whole series so far books 1-5

I have just finished book 5 in the series and thought I would write a review on the whole series (so far) as I loved all of them the same.

So if you've read the synopsis you'll now that Morgan was on his way home to his wife and 3 kids when.... the power goes out, an EMP maybe? and plunges the world back into the stone age. Now you might be thinking that there is a couple of other books on the same line and a successful TV show.

However what makes this different?
Morgans story and the situations that he finds himself in with people that are trying to survive. I continually thought "yeah, that is what would happen, thats how people would act in that situation" it is brilliantly thought through. The characters are fantastic as well all with very different backstories which really makes you care about what happens to them.

But the stand out thing is the narration by Duke Fontaine it is fantastic it probably the best I've heard, he puts constant voices on all the characters so you know every time who is talking but is still clear to understand.

The only thing I would have liked is an explanation to why Morgan prepared the way he did, it sort of does near the end of the series, its only a small thing but it bug me a little.

If you like excellent narration, brilliant characters and a believable story (with a little hollywood drama chucked in) give this a go.

Book with a great premise but an agenda

What disappointed you about Going Home?

I do admit that as a 30 something female I am probably not the target audience for this book. But the story had an interesting premise and I thought I’d give it a ago. It started really well and I actually believed the scenarios that the main characters were finding themselves in. But as the story progressed I got slowly tired of the constant references to backpacks, guns, ammo, food rations, radios and other various 3 letter acronyms for survival gear. Once the right wing politics underpin the story it really lost me.

What was most disappointing about A. American’s story?

This is obviously guys’ book. The female characters are sketchy at best and in case of Jessie just plain annoying. Her main contribution to the story is to flirt a bit and put others in danger because she can’t deal with the situation. Luckily she is only present in the book for a relatively short time.

What three words best describe Duke Fontaine’s performance?

Solid and well delivered.

What character would you cut from Going Home?

Jessie!

Any additional comments?

I’ve been tough on this book and maybe it's more of a 3 star book than 2 star. But I just can’t shake the disappointment. The story and the characters had a great potential so I just feel a bit let down by the story’s direction.

I did this , I did that !

Morgan's first person prospective became tiresome. literally the whole novel was written like this. "I took this branded cup, out of this branded pouch. I filled the cup with this branded food and set it on my branded stove while scanning the environment with my NVGS
(NIGHT VISION GOGGLES)"
Story had promise , definitely novel with an agenda for any one wearing a tin foil hat. hated the switch between first and third person naritives. I like the characters Thadd and Sarge the dialog was believable when writen in the 3rd person narritive.

favourite of the series

this was most definitely my favourite book from this series as we were able to really get to know own the character who was a lovable character. his journey was one of captivating events and episodes that meant you really really don't want to put it down and don't want it to end. great new favourite author.

Going home. I was gripped form the start

Where does Going Home rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I really enjoyed this. (and the next 2 in the series) I get through about 4 audiobooks a month. I would place this in the top 10.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Difficult to decide between Morgan and Thad. Both do what has to be done. but neither like doing it.

Have you listened to any of Duke Fontaine’s other performances? How does this one compare?

Other than the next books in this series, No. But I will look for out for some. I liked his reading style. It sounded like he was enjoying the book too

First purchase I've ever returned.

I'm a big fan of apocalypse fiction. But I struggled with this big time. 50% in and I'd had enough. I'm sure I wrote better than this in year 6 and I'm talentless. "I woke up, then I brushed my teeth, then I cooked breakfast, then I cleaned up, then I packed all my stuff away, then I walked for a bit, then I bumped into someone...then I shot them"

Interesting story, mediocre execution

I found the plot of this book quite compelling; it was interesting enough that I was motivated to keep going to the end and listen to the second in the series. However, it’s worth noting that the story does feel, at times, like it’s pandering to the survivalist community in a sort of “Aren’t ordinary people stupid for not anticipating societal collapse” sort of way. (I believe the word “sheeple” is used at one point.)

Where I feel this book is let down is in the quality of the writing. Some of the dialogue is rather unnatural and in quite a few places, repeated words ruin the flow of the sentence. I started Going Home shortly after finishing a Stephen King novel, and the difference in writing ability was very obvious.

If you enjoy this genre, and you’re willing to endure rather clunky prose for the sake of a good narrative, then I’d recommend this book. Otherwise, you can afford to give it a miss.

Best prepper book so far

We take traveling for granted. If power and gas goes down, hungry people will bloke the streets and high ways and robb anyone for food and goods.
How will you travel home?

It was OK, happy to listen / buy the next.

this review must include at least 15 words what words would those be?

Well, the book was good and the characters reasonably grounded. Some of the villains were a touch idiotic but reasonably believable, the gov angle was a touch over egged & the survivalist elements were well presented and thought out.

loved it

great narrating and story is written very well.
goes in to good detail along the way
5 stars