Post-apocalyptic fiction exhibits a magnetic pull on my imagination. Every time I see a well-done cover for it, I almost always click the Kindle free sample button.
When I discover a captivating, delightful example of the genre, I just want to dive in and never leave. So it was with Last Light by Terri Blackstock, which you should definitely read today.
Although one might quibble about this, the book fits into the EMP sub-genre, with everything electric suddenly non-functional and our modern humans forced to survive without their modern conveniences. The action gets going on page one, with planes falling out of the sky, and never lets up.
(As a side note, in this it is much superior to the better-known One Second After by William Forstchen, which takes about a year — or at least the whole first chapter — before anything even a little bit interesting happens. But let us not digress.)
Blackstock’s characters Doug and his daughter Deni feel real in a way I rarely encounter. They make mistakes, they do stupid things, they stumble… and that makes me care about them all the more. I spent half the book looking away and trying to read out the corner of my eye because I don’t want them to be hurt.
Believable characters in which the reader wants to invest, suspense, a murderer on the loose, and more. This novel has all the ingredients for escapist delight, and I recommend it most highly.
It’s a work of Christian fiction. As such, it faces some challenges unique to believers, and these are where I have a hard time. When we write, we followers of Jesus do it at least in part because we want our work to direct the eyes of the reader toward something greater than ourselves. We don’t want to glorify evil behavior, we do want to show good choices producing good fruit. But we must always walk a line between depicting the truth and clubbing out readers over the head with it.
I found the book a bit heavy handed in delivering its message. But since it’s a message I like, it didn’t bother me that much.
Read Last Light by Terri Blackstock today. You will not regret it.
I wanted to mark this book down. I had a lot of fairly good reasons. But the story telling and writing are simply good enough that it has to have five stars. If you like mile-a-minute thrill rides, frame-ups, and black ops, check out 
A freak storm in the Sahara desert puts an archaeological team in deadly danger. But when they escape, their discovery could change the world. 
Two years ago, Luana Ehrlich made a splash when she introduced her series of Christian spy novels. Beginning with 
I just finished reading 
