Surrender the Sun

By: A R. Shaw

Narrated by: Kevin Pierce

Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's Summary

It's happened once before, and it will happen again.

In the year 2030 the Maunder Minimum, a period of solar inactivity, will cause a mini-ice age like it did between the years 1645 and 1710. When it does, Bishop will have to save her not only from the effects of severe weather but also from man himself.

Maeve Tildon and her son Ben live alone in the rural town of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Since her husband died in the war, she's barely kept her head above water, and when the first freeze strikes in the fall, she's completely unprepared for what lies ahead. Only a war-torn man, one who prefers the solitude of the Kootenai National Forest, can rescue her and her son.

From the best-selling author of the Graham's Resolution series, Shaw brings you Surrender the Sun.

©2016 Annette Shaw (P)2016 Annette Rachelle Shaw

Apocalyptic cold snap? Yes please!

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Unfortunately I felt that there were some things that were wrapped up way too quickly and conveniently which caused the story to lose some of its plausibility. Although the overall ending was fine, and the expected resolve has been experienced, I kind of felt...I don't know exactly...I guess cheated is the right word.

Which character – as performed by Kevin Pierce – was your favorite?

In my opinion, one of Kevin's greatest assets is his ability to read characters without actually characterizing them. There is no character better or worse than another based on his performance, they are all solid, easy to follow, and enjoyable to listen to.

Any additional comments?

Overall I enjoyed the book; it was fun, action filled, and it was nice to listen to something with a slightly different twist. However, I think it would have been more enjoyable if there was a stronger emphasis on the survivalist aspect of the "event". Instead it read a little more like an action movie. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but it was enough to make the listen somewhat agitating at times.

There were a few characters that didn't seem to have a reason to exist other than as convenient vessels or fodder to assist in passing from one scenario to another, timings that were way off to the point where i had to go back and re-listen to a couple of spots to make sure I didn't miss something like "...days went by before Bishop...", and activities that took place seemingly only to setup a scene rather than making sense to the situation and characters. Sometimes it was as if there were a bunch of "scene's" written first then "filler" was added between them after the fact to move us from one to the other. It's tough to discuss these without posting spoilers but they are the reasons I gave the story only 3 stars.

I will probably go ahead and pick up the next book if one is released. Although it wasn't my favorite it was still fun and my expectations will be adjusted accordingly.

This audiobook was given by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review.

10 of 11 people found this review helpful

Didn't Anyone See the Oncoming Train?

Where does Surrender the Sun rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the better prepper disaster type of books. Well written and researched and mostly plausible.

What does Kevin Pierce bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Kevin Pierce always does an excellent job of narration and brings more depth and characterization to the books he narrates. This one is no exception.

Any additional comments?

Well written book about a unprepared mother and son. Of course most of the other characters in the book are unprepared as well. The signs are all there and as probably will always be true, they are ignored. Fortunately the prepared ones are mostly decent and do help as they can. There are a lot of hard cold facts as well. Facing a total breakdown of the infrastructure, at least locally as well as the extreme cold prove more than most can cope with.
There are a few moments that stretch credulity, but by in large this book is credible, possible and entertaining.
This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBlast dot com.

9 of 10 people found this review helpful

Great series!

It’s pretty hard to find a series narrated by Kevin Pierce that’s bad. I’m reviewing all three books since I pretty much listened to them all in two days. While the story isn’t alarmingly new it was definitely engaging and worth the credits I spent. I don’t want to give any details because honestly I don’t want to give spoilers.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

AWESOME!

Loved it. I wish it didn't have to end. A great story about an ice age in modern times.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

fresh take on how the world ends!

a widowed mother and her young son face the "unexpected" ice age with the help of a real world guardian angel/hermit and along the way step up when a whole town is too scared to make a stand.
the sign of a great writer is when they are able write a story with an actual beginning, midddle and a true ending (no stupid cliffhanger) that you feel good about while also leaving the reader anxious to read where the story goes next.
the author paints such a vivid image of the setting that you can't help but see the snow covered landscape while looking into booking a winter weekend on Lake Coeur d'Alene.
ready for book 2!

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Scary because it could happen!!

After finally getting to listen to this, I have to say it was well worth that hassle!! What happened was that when I first got this, I downloaded it to my kindle fire. When I clicked on it to listen... it disappeared! It just disappeared! I tried to re-download it but it wouldn't work, so I left it for a week or two and tried again. Thankfully after restarting my fire for the millionth time ;), it downloaded and I was able to listen!!

Anyway, this is the story of a mum and her son living in a remote area. Her husband was dead and she was trying to live life as best she could. When meteorologists warn people that the weather is worsening and there is extreme cold coming, nobody really listens. So when it does hit, Maeve and Ben aren't prepared. She thinks it's only going to last a few days and it will get better, but it's the beginning of the end! With the help of a friend, Maeve and her son struggle to survive in weather that will kill you in minutes.

I loved this book!! It's not so much a prepper book, as it is a book of survival. I know that even with the widely known aspects of prepping and why people do it, 90% of us would be screwed if something like this were to happen! I liked that Maeve is just a normal mom and wasn't an ultra prepared type. It takes her a while to fully grasp what is happening in the world and even then, she struggles with it. This was easy to believe. Bishop, on the other hand is sort of prepared. By that I mean, he wasn't a prepper, he was a man who came back from the war broken, and just wanted to live a life of solitude. He has some food stored away and is really good and knowledgeable about outdoors survival. Again, believable and a character that was easy to like.

The plot was really good and unique in the post apocalyptic genre. The idea that a mini ice age could happen is something we can all believe, especially the way the weather is worsening everywhere. The author did the research needed to make this a believable, entertaining and addicting read. It grabbed me from the very first page and held my attention till the very end. A well written and developed world, great characters and plenty of action, make this a fantastic read. Highly recommend and can't wait to see more from this author and this world!!!

I think I've said everything there is to say about Kevin Pierce and his ability as a narrator. He is the perfect one for stories of this type as he really knows how to tell the story properly. He is easy to listen to and always delivers a great performance.

*I received a free copy of this but voluntarily reviewed it. This in no way affected nor influenced my thoughts.*

6 of 8 people found this review helpful

Surrender does not equal suicide

Although accepting the inevitable 'Maunder Minimum,' the main characters of Surrender the Sun refuse to accept mankind's imminent demise as inevitable. Though dealing with the depravity many survivors exhibited and excused as survival of the most ruthless, Bishop and Mave fought to survive yet maintain their humanity and compassion for other, often weaker, survivors. Unfortunately, many times this presented an ethical dilemma of life-and-death proportions.

Although much of this book held true and typical of doomsday fiction, I was especially intrigued by its empathetic, but not overly sympathetic treatment of main and secondary characters suffering from PTSD due to wartime or from surviving the apocalypse or its more sinister human elements.
Without being overly detailed about preparation or tedious in describing survival tactics, this book concentrates on the human elements-good and evil-and in doing so gave encouragement that moral and physical survival is possible even when surrender to that that cannot be avoided is inevitable.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Pure Junk food

I've never read any prepper fiction but I've certainly read my share of dystopian works and hoped this would fall more on the later. There were a few red flags going in but I chose to ignore them.

Weirdly, one of the best criticisms of preppers was in a young adult novel I read, called "The Girl at the end of the World" where the protagonist assesses a crazed last-man-on-earth after a viral outbreak that leaves very few survivors. She off handedly quips that preppers are gamblers who have to pick their global catastrophe of choice and the man who she encounters is the lottery winner who to prepared for a viral outbreak, as he's replete with all the hazmat suits and decontamination gear to survive. His survival was sheer luck, not actual insight and thus lies the conundrum of preppers and survivalists. It's a slap in the face of smarmy attitude of preppers who welcome the oncoming disaster as it's a chance to prove themselves right... finally, as they look down those who weren't wise enough to prepare.

The plot really doesn't take much to kick into gear. There's a big snowstorm and Maeve on her way to drop her son off almost hits a hermit on his horse in the blizzard. She stops her car and apologizes to the mysterious man. This is where the book gets silly, and spirals downward fast, the mysterious stranger just so happens to be the one man who has the background to correctly assess Maunder Minimum. He's also an ex-solider, prepper, jack-of-all trades and is the estranged former best friend of her late husband. Despite the vague generic "saved each other more lives than each other could count" relationship our stranger has with the late husband, Maeve doesn't know him... at all despite her late husband asking this mystery man to watch over her. It's forced, contrived and ham-fisted. There's no nuance to be seen, while the writing itself is not terrible, it's story telling without subtly, deftness or even appropriate ramp up to create tension. Instead, it hits with the stupidity of a late 90s/early 2000s disaster flick. "Plot? That just gets in the way of the special effects!" Again, there's more depth to be found in young adult dystopian fiction, books written for tweens, not adults.

The stranger quickly inserts himself into her life, by helping her out. The escalation of events is absurdist, by day four of the magic snowstorm that freezes as far south as Texas, civilization has broken down. Yes, in four days civilization is over and people are looting, pillaging and murdering. Also, I say magic as there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the little ice age, as current theory is it was a combination of factors, one being vulcanology as multiple large volcanoes were active prior and during the little ice age nor was the winter unending. While the author does throw crumbs to climate change in a much needed author's note at the end, she never mentions man's involvement which strikes me as a bit irresponsible in an era of rampant science illiteracy. Her outro feels more like a bad overture to the new conservative of anti-science platform that climate change is real (which is a silly concession as we have ice core samples, fossils, and many other ways to prove climate change a zilloin times over) but either failing to mentioning man's role in climate change or denying man's involvement. It wouldn't have taken much to make at least the event to feel more plausible, and contain a little nuance by adding in multiple factors that make the storm less magical, (one of the fears of climate change is the fall of trade winds / ocean currents which could lead to larger polar caps and more desertification).

Lastly, the book falls into classic man-pandering. There's plenty of passages explaining the "role of men" as protectors and the agents of change. Maeve is hopelessly frail, because... she's a woman. Even her six year old son shows more guile and a collectedness under stress. Yes, her six year old son is more capable of fending off an adult male attacker than her and it happens twice. While I wasn't expecting political correctness to dictate a fictional book, it struck me as inherently stupid that an adult woman is less capable than a six year old child. It every situation, it takes a man to arrive at a course of action or fend off an attacker. It's weirdly sexist coming from a female writer and not a criticism I expected to lob at the book. Maeve is worthless and her own real value is an object to be put in peril for our stranger to rescue, and fawn over her pretty red hair.

In the end, the book mostly stays apolitical when it comes to politics, but science and sociology has a wildly and crassly conservative edge. The biggest crime however is the book is stupid. I've read worse but I found myself rolling my eyes numerous times and annoyed how forced situations felt. Over all, if this is one of the more original entries in prepper fiction, then all the stereotypes I harbor about the genre are true.

Notably, the narration is good, Kevin Pierce kept me listening and I applaud him for keeping me listening.

9 of 13 people found this review helpful

Good Story Line, Yet...

What did you love best about Surrender the Sun?

I loved the idea of the plot line itself. How would you survive in an emergency such as this? That's what kept me interested in the book itself... as I don't know the answer to that at the moment... and that was a good thing.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The plot line is one interesting aspect of the story, but there was one conflicting issue: the actual air temp.. The main characters kept mentioning that it was getting colder and colder, and yet, it didn't go very much below zero degrees... even in the later chapters. The wind chills would have been bad enough, I grant you, but the impression I had of the lot was that it was supposed to get bad with all the snow and the cold temps.

Lotta snow, and definitely getting colder. But nothing like I'd imagined.

Have you listened to any of Kevin Pierce’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes.

Any additional comments?

I loved being able to read this for free. Thanks audible!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

A different perspective!

SHTF scenario with a twist. Very well done! Look forward to the next one.


"This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review."

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

"Dead man's funny!"

Any additional comments?

When it started to snow at the end of October and they cancelled Halloween, few people were prepared for how bad it would get. Certainly not still grieving widow, Mauve. Her husband, Roger had been killed in the war a year before leaving her alone with a young son, Ben, in an isolated house by the Forrest. fortunately, he had asked an old military friend, now living as a recluse in the woods, to look out for them. And he did.This is their story of survival as a mini ice age envelopes their world, a fight against the cold, lack of provisions and the rapidly escalating civil unrest. And it is a terrifying tale as there is a real sense of both immediacy and possibility, sometimes missing in other apocalyptic books.
The main characters are well drawn by the author and Kevin Pierce's excellent narration really brings them to life as well as his reading being pleasant on the ear. A good pepper's starter book, too, reminding us all that disaster can strike when least expected and at least some basic provision should be made for when it does -even if this only means keeping the larder stocked up with more than just a couple of days food. More could well be hard to come by even in a temporary disaster.
My thanks to the right's holder for gifting me a copy of Surrender the Sun, via Audiobook Boom. It was most enjoyable, well written and certainly worth the listen. I believe there is to be a sequel. If so, I will certainly want to hear it.
Recommended.