After reading and not liking Next so much, I dove into this second book The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

I didn’t know anything about this book prior to picking it up as a throw in to get over $25 in my cart at Amazon for free shipping. I read the online equivalent of the book jacket, figured “why not?” And gave it a shot. I started it last night… and just about finished it last night. It was that good.

When the book started it was kind of artsy – seemed like the author was throwing together a lot of euphonous, overly descriptive words. Either I got used to it, or he stopped. I figure he stopped. Early on, he tries to get across without saying it that we’re in some kind of post-apocalyptic future, which, with only a few pages left, the cause hasn’t really been revealed yet. So I don’t know what happened.

It’s a story of a father and his very young son, two of a handful of survivors (that are mentioned, anyway). They are trying to make it “south” or somewhere that the father has perceived as safe. There’s a road, there’s lots of fire, and lots of ash. There is no sunshine, or not sunshine like we know it as something is covering the atmosphere. They are some of the last in a long line of survivors that are migrating somewhere – where isn’t exactly clear. The tone through the entire book so far has been futile – they literally go five days at a time without eating, because there is literally nothing, no animal life, no plant life – all while in fear of being discovered by anyone. They scavenge what they can from burned down and abandoned buildings, but just about everything has already been taken. A can of beans is a novelty, and has to be stretched.

In this fictitious future it has reached the point where some survivors have actually started enslaving and eating other people – that’s how bad it’s gotten in this scenario. It isn’t grisly or violent – that’s the best part. McCarthy does a great job of giving you an impression of how bad things really are. It’s easy to believe that if anything like this happened – it could really be this bad. With nothing to eat and nowhere to go – wow. And it sucked me in.

I really recommend this book – it’s the first book in a long time that I’ve been able to read like this.