The Sword of the Lady by S.M. Stirling, 496 pages

  After finishing this book, I’m officially mad at the author of this series, and I may or may not get beyond my frustration enough to continue to the next book.

  I’m mad because when I start a series, I trust that the author can be a reliable guide who knows where he/she is going and that I will return from the adventure I’ve stepped into. Right now, I have no faith that the author will ever provide sufficient closure.

  The Sword of the Lady is the seventh book in S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse series, all of which I’ve read in addition to a companion set of three books (that stopped with no closure) that share the same starting point but that branch out in a different time dimension than the series that The Sword of The Lady plays out in.

  I’ve clearly enjoyed the books or I wouldn’t have now read ten of them over the last five years. The beginning premise of both series stem from one incident called "The Change," one day in 1998, when unexpectedly, immediately, and simultaneously, the entire world loses power. All electrical and fossil-fuel powered engines cease functioning and gunpowder stops working. Chaos and death ensue, eventually followed by emerging new societies of survivors.

  The Sword of the Lady takes place in 2022, twenty-four years after the change, focusing on a specific group of first generation young adults who have existed only in their post-apocalyptic areas of what used to be the United States.

  It appears that at least another seven books have already been written to follow this book, and another is due to be released in the fall of 2018. I don’t know . . . I like the story . . . I like the characters . . . But at the moment, I’ve completely lost patience because I have no intention of being lost in one fictional series for the remainder of my life. I think I’ll stop reading, hope the books eventually reach a satisfactory conclusion and are turned into a TV series that I can binge watch some year on Netflix to better use the real life I’ve been granted.

Wool by Hugh Howey, 509 pages

   I found Wool to be a quick and absorbing read. It is a post-apocalyptic, coming-of-age, science fiction novel. 

   Juliette, Lukas, and their entire society live underground after the earth’s surface has been made uninhabitable. Their system of living, the life each had experienced prior to the story at hand, and the situation they must try to survive kept my interest. You’ll find action, mystery, and suspense in this one, the first book of a trilogy with several additional volumes stemming from it. 

   I look forward to stepping back into the world created by Hugh Howey in books that follow someday, perhaps when I’m holed up inside to stay out of winter weather.