Title: Year One
Series Connection: Chronicles of the One
Author: Nora Roberts
ISBN-10: 1250122953
ISBN-13: 978-1250122957
Genre: Paranormal, Dystopian, Witchcraft
Just an ordinary New Year's Eve for a family when a deadly flu breaks out. It begins with just one man but within a few weeks the flu has taken out nearly half the world's population. Leaving those left behind reeling not only with the death of those they loved, but also a whole new changed world.
The world changes in more ways than just the devastation of death, but soon those alive begin to realize they have other powers of the supernatural kind and have to learn to deal with the. Some are good and with the good come the bad. Evil supernaturals that kill for pleasure. With them are also those that have no special abilities, but also kill for pleasure.
Finding the good isn't easy.
The story follows the lives of several different groups of friends and families and what they do to survive in this new world.
This story is like nothing you've ever read from Nora Roberts before, so if you are looking for a love story, this book isn't for you. Although there is a recurring couple in the book, the story more revolves around the description of the new world. This book is much more like a
dystopian/magic story than anything else. It is well written and it kept me interested to the point that I read it through the night three nights in a row and stayed up way too late. Even with said there are those who won't like this book because it isn't what they would expect from the author and not their type of story.
Descriptions:
A stunning new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts—Year One is an epic of hope and horror, chaos and magick, and a journey that will unite a desperate group of people to fight the battle of their lives…
It began on New Year’s Eve.
The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed—and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.
Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magick rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river—or in the ones you know and love the most.
As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.
In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.
The end has come. The beginning comes next.