In my last blog post I shared a Prepper Potpourri YouTube video that had a list of dystopian/prepper novels and I’m on my third Deborah D. Moore novel – The Journal series. I found this series available on Hoopla. I’ve recommended Hoopla, an online service that includes free audiobooks and e-books, available through many public libraries here in the US, in other blog posts. I use my local library card to sign-in to Hoopla and borrow books online. My local library also offers Libby, another digital book service, but I have had some issues using the Libby app and for a lot of books on Libby that I’ve wanted to borrow, there’s a waiting list.
Reading an apocalyptic novel where the main character is a female super-prepper is something new for me. This entire doomsday prepper/dystopian genre seems very much like the male thriller/action novels my late husband often read and occasionally I’d read one that he recommended. It didn’t require any coaxing with the early Tom Clancy novels, because I often claimed first dibs on new Clancy novels. Invariably, the main character in those male action novels was a MacGyver/super warrior all wrapped into one – fighting to save the world from death and destruction. Moore has created a female main character, Allexa Smeth, who is pretty much a female version of that. The first book in the series is called The Journal: Cracked Earth, where the US east coast is hit by some freakish bad hurricane and then other parts of the US & world begin experiencing major earthquakes.
The story is set in some small Michigan town, where besides being a super-prepper, master at gardening/foraging, spectacular cook and baker, and a weapons expert, Smeth is also the local emergency manager. Yet, her training appears to be living off-grid for years, information she’s gathered by reading how-to books, being an OCD prepper and from her online prepper groups, not professional training for being the emergency manager within a government system.
Knowing how to navigate in government systems and leverage bureaucracy to your community’s advantage is something Smeth, as the emergency manager, does not know how to do at all and seems hostile to. This antigovernment sentiment seems very prevalent within American prepper/survivalist communities and frankly knowing what government resources are available and who handles what resources, plus developing some professional relationships within the bureaucracy can often help a community acquire scarce resources (and information, which is a critical need too). Developing working relationships within a big bureaucracy can also help cut through red tape.
First, I’m going to explain the things I didn’t like about this novel. As a first novel, well, there are loads of typos & editing issues and those were distracting, but I’ve read piles of crappy romance novels in my lifetime, so I can overlook a lot of that. Decades ago, there was a romance novel fad for time travel romances and I read more of those than I care to admit and every single one was absurd. I breezed through The Journal: Cracked Earth and flew through the second novel, The Journal: Ash Fall, in this series and am now on the third one, The Journal: Crimson Skies. Hoopla is free and I doubt I would have purchased this series, but I’m curious to see where this story goes.
A lot of romance writers use predictable plot twists and this story feels like a Doomsday romance novel genre, that I didn’t know existed. I’m finding, that as soon as there’s some hopeful events, this author’s going to throw in more mayhem, another natural disaster or deadly disease outbreak wreaking epic destruction… or gunfights and that’s the way it’s gone through the second book and into the third.
Little things often irk me a lot and in this novel one of the main character’s sons has gotten out of the Army, after serving a number of years and he was a Sergeant First Class, but consistently, the author spells Sergeant as Sargent and that common misspelling is just a pet peeve of mine that makes me grit my teeth.
Often Allexa Smeth is presented as a genius at handling emergency management challenges, yet she seems to hold the people she’s supposed to be serving in contempt and she’s constantly complaining about not wanting them to rely on her… but them turning to her as their community emergency manager is part of her job. The whole moral dimension of being a public servant seemed missing in Smeth in the first book, but by the third book, while she’s still a reluctant public servant, she has become much more adept at team work with other community leaders.
There are aspects to this series that raise it above romance-novel-gone-doomsday-prepper. This novel was published in 2014, long before our surreal pandemic information dramas, but Moore includes many situations where Smeth periodically catches some news, when the power is on, which is sporadic, and she can’t make sense of what the news media is reporting. She also can’t make sense of some of the information she receives from her superior in a nearby city. Often the news media gives initial reports of catastrophes and massive causalities, then provides no follow-up coverage. The characters are left not knowing what’s really going on in the world. Lack of reliable information becomes the norm and that seems very realistic. Smeth and her small circle of family and friends are left operating by focusing on their own immediate situation and circumstances, trying to continually think ahead and preparing as best they can with what little information and resources they have.
After just reading, The Journal of David Q. Little, I’m seeing two completely different ways to develop a story told via a diary. Smeth’s story often sounds like she’s regurgitating stuff from a survival blog or a prepper video, while David Q. Little comes across as a weak man, who is alarmed and unsure of what’s happening and he’s not sure how to navigate with the rapidly changing new rules. Smeth seems a bit too confident about being prepared and knowing how to handle every situation. There’s too much modern feminist ideology entwined in the story for my taste – the, “I am Woman Hear Me Roar” mentality. Wonder Woman Survivalist, Allexa Smeth, often overshadows all the male characters, to the point she comes across as very cold and calculating and makes the men, especially her love interests, look weak and impotent.
The author obviously put in a lot of research on a wide variety of topics and has extensive experience with the modern prepper/survivalist ecosystem. Many of Moore’s characters work hard to acquire new skills, share knowledge and know-how and keep working hard to cope with the monumental challenges. The family closeness between Smeth, her adults sons and her grandchildren softened some of her harder edges, as the larger-than-life action heroine. Life continues, even when the world is falling apart with this family – birthdays and holidays are remembered and celebrated with simple family & friends get togethers and that’s something I enjoyed in the plot. The story moves along at a fast pace, so these are quick reads.
These novels include all sorts of situations and events that I’ve never even thought about, so I have no earthly idea how realistic the imagining of these apocalyptic disasters are. Before the pandemic, novels with so much bad human behavior surging would have struck me as absurd, but seeing the fallout from the BLM Defund the Police mindset, with disrespect and disregard for the rule of law spreading across the country, and the Us vs. Them partisan divisiveness spreading in America, a novel where some of the people devolve into gangs of feral animals or bad actors, unfortunately seems plausible.
This series isn’t the worst thing I’ve read and I’d probably give it a 2-3 out of 5 star rating. And, as I’m almost through the third book in this series – the typos and editing problems continue and Sergeant remains… Sargent, but the story doesn’t seem any worse than a lot of doomsday movies, which were very popular and it’s better than a lot of romance novels I’ve read. I’m not sure whether I’ll continue with this series at some point, but after Crimson Skies, I’m moving on to some upbeat books for a bit.
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