This is it, he thought. This is what he’d been planning for.
Premise: After “The Smash” collapses the economy, the novel covers two main storylines, one as the town drunk attempts to clean up and help his community, and another man who is trying to get to the “retreat” of his former survivalist group.
This was the highly anticipated book from the author of Lights Out.
This was a bit of a different read in that services didn’t break down as quickly as in other apocalypse scenario books. Grocery stores were still getting food deliveries and other than lack of power, things didn’t quite seem as dire as one would otherwise imagine.
The book revolves around two storylines. The first, DJ is a wannabe cop working as a security job who has been prepping for such a disaster for quite some time. He has a planned retreat to go to when SHTF, and his story follows his attempt to get there.
While DJ seemed okay in the beginning, I don’t think I was even half way through the book when I started to hate him and realized this was probably one half of the collision course the author had planned. He seemed to enjoy killing people – while some were truly life-and-death situations, in other cases it was merely to make his life a bit easier. His mostly lack of remorse and how he treated those who helped him really grated on me – enough so that I really began hoping someone would kill him, a bit unusual for a main character in a novel.
When Gabe woke up to total darkness, he realized something wasn’t right. Even if all the lights in the house were off, some illumination from the security light out front should have filtered through the window blinds.
The other story revolves around the life of Gabe, the local town drunk. I do admit I found Gabe a little hard to like in the beginning, until you get to know what life handed him that led him down the path to alcoholism. But I really enjoyed his story and his struggles – and eventual romance – playing out in the community that ones disdained him. Although not a prepper per se, he was a gardener, and that seemed to be the one thing that kept him somewhat grounded over the years.
While there is a sense of community, it didn’t really delve as much into the role of community as other similar books – in fact, it seemed sort of like an afterthought of “well, I guess we better see how we can get this group defending their property so that I can set up the final scene.”
And what a final scene it was. While I was glad to see one of the characters get his comeuppance, the ending left me disappointed after investing my time into the characters.
While Lights Out, David Crawford’s other post-apocalyptic novel is a favorite of many, Collision Course unfortunately isn’t as good. However, if you are stuck for something to read one day, might be worth reading it.
