The Final Day: A John Matherson Novel (A John Matherson Novel, 3) Hardcover – January 3, 2017

Even a trusted person is difficult to trust in hard moments. So codes of conduct and shared standards are necessary at rock bottom times that require excruciating decisions.

Excellent read. Like the first two, The Final Day is hard to put down. Highly recommended and looking forward to the next one which is to be released in August.

I loved all three of these books. On the edge of my seat reading them.

Really makes you think about how fragile our lifestyle is and how easily it could be gone. Can’t wait for the next book!

A reset is certainly coming and only 1% give it any thought. This book is a nail biter read! Highly recommend taking the time to enjoy the book.

Just finished "The Final Day," third (and probably last) in the "One Second After" trilogy. My one word reaction was, "okay." Why? Because Forstchen is a good writer with real expertise on his subject and has a fascinating premise with almost infinite possibilities for great storytelling. And he built a strong foundation for a third book on the first two, so The Final Day should have been a great tale. It wasn't. It was okay, and that was down to Forstchen's writing, which was clunky all the way through.Disturbingly clunky, with huge chunks of turbid prose, mindless repetition (alright, already, we GOT it) plot lines that fade into nothingness, and characters that are flat and boring. I'll avoid any major spoilers, but let's cover those points one by one.Forstchen isn't terse, and lots of the prose is like technical writing, Here's one example. "All eyes turned to Paul and Becka, each of them holding one of the twins, who were taking in their first journey to the outside world with wide-eyed wonder, both parents keeping back a bit protectively, for Becka was indeed paranoid about the prospect of the twins catching a cold or something worse from those gathered around." That's one run on sentence and almost the whole paragraph. Come on, man, this kind of thing is where great writers step forward. "Becka was indeed paranoid?" You're not supposed to tell us that, you're supposed to involve us.Repetition. Forstchen loves to make his point. Over and over. Some of it's just annoying redundancy, like this, on the same page as the above: "Paul and Becka had already placed the twins in the back of the Edsel." Next paragraph: Paul and Becka were already in the backseat, huddled over their precious cargo as John helped Makala into the old Edsel after passing the word to Bradley to give a call up to the town hall at the campus to let them know they were leaving." Okay, the twins are in the back seat. Who cares? It's not important to the story and once would have been enough. This happens a lot. People are sitting around talking, making a point, and two pages later, they make it all over again. I counted one exchange that covered the exact same ground four times. I actually checked to see if I'd turned the page backward instead of forward. Nope, just the character, repeating a point I guess he felt he hadn't made often enough. The repetition wouldn't be bad except that when you get into the story and flow with it, you're ready to move on to the resolution of the conflict, or to see how the danger is overcome, and Forstchen pulls us in. Then he repeats everything he just said, which keeps us from reaching our goal. Clunky.Plot threads (and some characters, too) disappear without a trace. We're teased with an unknown government spy in the town, somebody's snitching John and the townspeople off and got a bunch of them killed in the last book. This raises all kinds of possibilities for the writer. Who is the betrayer? How does he do it? What motivates him? How will John find him? What will the good guys do when they catch the bad guy? Forstchen spares us all that suspense by ignoring the whole thing. Guess it wasn't important enough to mention it (about ten times) early on. Another example is the helicopter they captured in "One Year After." That device finally gets used in "The Final Day," but ultimately disappoints. This time, the helo does some important stuff in an exciting sequence, getting damaged in the process. Will they be able to fix it? How will they ingeniously get the bird back up for some other important adventure? Will their resourceful but eccentric aircraft mechanic be able to get the helo up in time? Will the enemy find its secret hiding place? What role will the damaged (and presumably repaired) helicopter play in ending the story? I'll spare you the suspense. The helicopter goes into a hangar and never gets mentioned again. Even the bad guys don't particularly care about it, although you'd think they'd be interested in getting their $6 million aircraft back.Another minor thing. The folks finally figure out how to get some old, obsolete computers working, stuff that wasn't plugged in and was sitting around in a basement, so supposedly unaffected by the EMP. Big buildup, pages and pages. Then, huh... And if the EMP didn't fry computers that weren't plugged in, what happened to all those brand-new, not-obsolete machines in boxes waiting to be sold? Why can't they use those?Finally, nobody, anywhere, ever talks like these people. Everybody, in almost every sentence, uses the other person's name. Who does that in the real world? "A beautiful woman, John. Lots of guts. Can see why you fell in love with her." "Thank you for playing your part, Bob. But she knows."It's just Bob and John talking, but they "John" and "Bob" each other steadily. The dialogue is stilted and frequently corny, and gets interrupted with stuff like, "She smiled, the smile of the legendary Cheshire cat, luring by its cryptic words its prey coming in closer for the kill." Okay.And that's the bottom line. "The Final Day" is okay. A quick read if you skip the clunky bits, which you will after the first few pages. The ending is so-so, but ultimately satisfying.Okay.

I've read worst books and book stores, but those tended to be indecipherable tomes by Dickens & Hawthorne inflicted on me in High School, or "House of Leaves". The Final Day, Forstchen's last book in the "EMP triology" is absolute garbage. It really is.The book starts approximately 3 years after The Day, and when a former colleague wanders into down Matheson decides to try to contact his old friend General Scales. The meat of the book is that the government in Bluemont(I guess Forstchen didn't want to write "Mount Weather" repeatably) knew of the attack the morning of, moved their families to safety, and wanted to make a "reset". It ends with Scales and Matheson teaching those (((elites))) a lesson, including the new president, a shrill woman who used to be secretary of state.For someone with a PHD his research is atrocious. If this had landed on my desk in my upper level and grad IAFF courses it would have been handed right back.Forstchen repeatedly describes rotor aircraft as “still in desert camo”. Generally speaking, army and USMC aircraft are not repainted for the environment. This would have been easy for him to look up, but I suppose that that was too hard for him.He repeatedly refers to magazines as “clips”, which drove me up the wall to no end.At one point a Afghan war vet describes ROE where “they weren’t even allowed to shoot back if fired upon” in Afghanistan. While I am aware of at least one NATO member of ISAF who had that ROE, I would bet any amount of money that Forstchen would be unable to produce such rules for American troops.The author seems to think that cracking modern cryptography is just like Bletchy Park, and totally doesn’t require banks of super computers. Conveniently, there’s the very well off prepper family that did software work for NASA, and they have students from the Montreat College Cybersecurity program, who are “real geniuses” there to help out. Ignoring the significant problems with use-it-or-lose-it for skills after 3 years without computers, I strongly doubt “real geniuses” in IT and information Security are going to Montreat for their Cyber Security program, which has “a survey of the Old Testament” on the curriculum and “the ability to integrate Christian worldview and ethics in the work environment” as a goal for the program. I can’t speak to their IT specific classes, but I am skeptical that these are equal to or superior to something like what a flagship public institution would have.I guess in Forstchen’s world no one would notice Blackhawks suddenly landing at schools and spiriting away families of VIPs hours before the attack, or the number of helicopters/road traffic heading to such facilities in rural parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia.Forstchen describes Raven Rock mountain complex as having been “mothballed” after the Cold War and originally built to house 25k people(!). Matheson, despite having been an instructor at the Army War College not far away, never heard of Site R until General Scales tells him about it.These are the sort of problems right off the top of my head, research wise, but the most egregious part of the books was his messaging.The author seems to think he is writing another "Alas, Babylon". He has not. Where Randy Bragg and his extended family are progressive and inclusive, Matheson and the Black Rock community are regressive and scions of “standing up to political correctness” trope. Forstchen makes use of the token “good” black in two of the books, to stand in contrast to the “bad urban populations” they have to fight. The author never lets a opportunity pass to comment about “political correctness” throughout the series, or harking about how national guilt was pushed in public universities.Where Pat Frank used religion as a vehicle for the story, Forstchen dialed Christianity up to 11 and, especially in the third book, seemed to have some sort of praying going on every 4-5 pages. The one non-Christian, a Pakistani named Hamid who runs a gas station, isn’t seen after the first book. Hope he wasn’t killed by the locals, but odds seem good. Why? Well…9/11 is mentioned so frequently that it should be accompanied by a shitty modern Nashville style song about it. At one point in a town meeting that takes place 2 years after The Day(remember, at this point approximately 80% of the town population has died) citizens jarringly interject that “we should have killed everyone in Gitmo”.Matheson, a professor at a small, expensive college with no endowment has dripping contempt for the “elites” who went to Ivy League schools where large endowments mean a lot of financial aid. The author got his PHD at Purdue, which totally doesn’t present itself as an elite institution.I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about “Mexico seizing control of the Southwest and China the West coast up to the Rockies”.In the third book Forstchen goes hard into the (((Deep State))). Even going so far as “discovering” about Site R because someone used their personal email in the clear. Somehow I doubt this wasn’t in reference to the Trump clan doing so. At one point there is a sarcastic reference to “our good friends the Russians” in context to the (((Deep State))), something that I’m sure he thought would age better when he wrote it in 2016.The president is a woman and “former secretary of state” with a shrill voice. On the morning of The Day she and others get their families to safety and don’t tell “that fool(44)” about it, so he dies. They had thought the attacks would “only” be strikes on NYC and DC, and for some reason East Coast elites in the authors mind would have been onboard with tanking the economy that such an attack would bring in the name of a “reset”.Matheson and General Scales make much of a need to “return to the Constitution” and end the third book by just inviting 5 representatives from each remaining state, with no clear instruction for elections and selections. But that’s okay, the shadow government is defeated and China totally wouldn’t be alarmed by a Christian Dominionist general taking over and overthrowing the government in Mount Weather.-----------tl;dr if you want a book about EMPs that isn't complete garbage, look at Steven Konkoly's "The Perseid Collapse" series. It's in dire need of editing but it shows you can make prepper fiction without being reactionary, theocratic garbage.

This 3rd book has a good plot and has interesting characters but fails in one thing only (and that's why I am rating it 4 stars instead of 5): the Autor put too much unnecessary details on second and thirds facts and this, my friend, is a little bit annoying when you are reading the book and eager to see what happen next. Nonetheless, this is a good book and if you have already read the 2 others you probably will like this third.

I was hooked from the first book One Second After, so reading the following books always made me nervous as with 'First album syndrome' the follow ups can sometimes seem hollow or tired.Not in this case though.Forstchen maintains a flow through this series which keeps a pace demanding you turn to the next chapter, even if it's 2am.The plot line examines the best and worst in human nature and continues through the final novel.The whole premise of America falling foul of an EMP attack reaches its climax after a well developed story of the possibilities if such catastrophe were to occur.I think he has delved into the human aspect quite honestly showing the depravities people can reach without a structured framework to live to. Or the great spirit of those determined to survive and live as a community.The ending was hard for me, not as a story but simply it was the end. I enjoyed John Mathesons company and have kept these books, rather than the usual donation to the charity shop.Excellent reading!

This part of a trilogy, last part.They all make good resting, but the first was definitely the most interesting. Also, there is s very strong pro-military right wing bias in all three. I think at some point it says that the church, medicine and military are the only honourable professions. Hmm.

After One Second After and One Year after, this is the last instalment of the story. Very addictive, right to the end. All books shipped quickly by Amazon to Storage Locker. Buy all three books and set aside time to read them. You will not be disappointed.

Bit slow to start off with, this being the final part of a pretty decent trilogy, but it is well worth sticking with. Did not anticipate the twist at the end however it rings true. Humanity, especially amongst the rich and powerful, can sink to levels so low it would make you sick. Definitely one of the better EMP style series of novels.Ray Smillie