Bruno Miller

Ok. So, as of today, March, ninth, twenty-twenty-three, I am five books into this thirteen-book series, and here is my take-away, so far...

We have a judgmental a-hole, who thinks his tattoos are legit, because, "he earned them". But his heart is in the right place as he takes his son, and his son's school-mate, (a teenaged girl) on a cross-country road trip to find his two younger children, after a series of EMP strikes cause the breakdown of civilization. As a parent who has taught his son to hunt, fish, and survive in the wild, this retired Army Ranger, seems caught off-guard by the barbarous treachery of desperate people, who will stop at nothing to take what he has.

The stories are well written, though a bit juvenile in the perspective (guess the writer has never spent time in a crime-riddled, inner-city). The narrator nearly put me to sleep with his attempts at over dramatization.

That said - I really enjoyed the first five books and look forward to hearing the rest of the saga. If more parents took the time to teach their children how to find and purify water, how to think critically and make decisions with the long view in mind, our country and the world would be a better place...SMILE!!!

PS,
I Loved The Dog… (más)

Escape is not much different from the 1st book in the series...planning, planning, and not much action. The threesome finally hit the road from CO to Maryland in a SUV loaded with supplies. Once again, only 48 hrs after the event, there are very few people seen - except in one instance - it is assumed that many are staying indoors in fear of gangs and other threatening individuals. What's more unbelievable is the amount of bodies (passengers trapped) within crashed vehicles that are visible everywhere. The story covers two days of travel and can be read in a couple of hours. The rest of the individual books in the series (3) are near the same size and sell for $2.99 each as did this one. As a result of the slow-moving story, I will pass on the rest of this series and seek something with a little more action.… (más)

I was engaged in Breakdown from the start and then felt bogged down in all the planning. Father and son on a camping trip in the mountains witnessed an explosion in the sky that was thought to be an EMP; no electronics worked afterward. Although the news reports cited bad blood between the US and North Korea in the days preceding the event, the attacker was never identified . The father, a former Army Ranger, stocks a basement vault with various weapons and ammunition and sorts through the lot to decide what to take and what to leave behind...my problem was that every time a weapon was mentioned, the author had to go into great detail with the nomenclature and other specifics about them - be it a rifle, knife, scope or other. Another fallacy to contend with throughout the short story was to believe the amount and level of ransacking that had taken place to date...every business and house was virtually destroyed...all within 48 hours and with only a handful of people seen on the street or elsewhere. Come on...! The twosome end up rescuing the sons' potential girlfriend and then return home in the mountains to gather supplies and plan a trip from CO to Maryland to check on both families who live in out east.

When I finished, I found the next book in the series to be included in Kindle lending and thought I'd have nothing to lose and downloaded it for free...it, too, is only 160 pages, but so are the rest of the books in the series and all of them are priced at $2.99 ea. After seeing where this current book goes, I don't plan on purchasing any of the other novella's.

Authors using this strategy to split up 800 pages - including all the repetition - into a five-book series and then pricing each as stand-alone novels don't realize that they are losing many potential customers who stop reading after the 1st or 2nd book because of this ploy. I'd be more apt to spend $.99 each or purchase the series in a two-book set for under $5.… (más)