The apocalypse doesn’t need plagues or zombies or bombs. All it needs is us.
Set in the very near future, WHAT CAME AFTER takes place in a too-credible third-world America that’s been hijacked by corporations in the service of the wealthy. The Federal government has collapsed, health care is inaccessible, and private armies keep order. The upper class is concentrated in the cities, while the middle class—decimated by disease and poisoned by genetically engineered foods—labors on in a handful of desolate Empowerment Zones.
One man, Henry Weller, has had enough. With his five-year-old daughter going blind, he sets out across a ruined America to find her the health care she deserves. He’ll have to face a strange and hostile world—from the financial districts of a walled New York to the armed camp of Washington, DC—but if he’s successful, his daughter might see again.
And along the way, a revolution might get started.
WHAT CAME AFTER is shaped by issues on everyone’s mind right now: poverty, corporate power, access to heath care, the outsourcing of government, parents’ obligations to their children.
But at its core, it’s a post-apocalyptic adventure in a desolate and treacherous world: THE WIZARD OF OZ meets HEART OF DARKNESS, at the end of the American dream.
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From the critics:
“Sometimes I just keep hearing about a book on social media and I get so curious, I seek out the book myself. Case in point: Sam Winston’s extraordinary WHAT CAME AFTER, an e-book about the end of the world. I started reading after dinner and didn’t stop until I finished. This is no ordinary book. Character-driven, haunting, and gorgeously written, I think it’s a classic.”
— Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of PICTURES OF YOU.
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For a limited time, WHAT CAME AFTER includes the opening of Sachin Waikar’s IN THE JUNGLE OF BLACK AND YELLOW, a vengeance thriller reviewers have called “terrific,” “Tarantino-like,” “wonderfully dark,” and “beautifully crafted.”
So Good it Might Be Criminal to Read in the Future….Excellent! Sam Winston has hit it right on the head. This book is dog-gone near perfect. I’ve read hundreds of dystopian and post-apocalyptic works and this one shot right up to the Top Ten. In fact, he bumped out Stephen King on my Top 10 list…that is definitely saying something.Where to begin. Before I start waxing poetic here, let’s just say that the story is utterly and completely unique. There is nothing like it yet it is also understandable and approachable by the average person like myself. The characters are fleshed out yet it’s done in such a way that you aren’t aware they are being fleshed out, if you know what I mean. It’s done with the story in mind. The background, history, story and action all flow from logical points of view and you can really see this in a future version of us. In that way, it’s also a cautionary tale. But in the end what it is most is the story of the love a parent has for their child and what that parent will do to ensure the safety and happiness of that child.Our hero, and he is a hero, is Henry Weller. Not a fortunate man or of fortunate birth, he is nonetheless a curious and intelligent man who has become something of a wizard at mechanics out amongst the ruins of the industrial world. Broken things abound and he is the one that can fix them. The Empowerment Zone, which is just a nice way of saying anyplace the rich aren’t, where he lives with his small family isn’t much, but it is home.A chance meeting and a friendly favor start the entire story. We are introduced and then carried through this new world with Henry as he seeks to make things right for his daughter. The story flows so well that we, the reader, are swept along as an almost active participant. You’ll find yourself tense when he is, relieved when he is and frightened when things don’t go well. If you’re looking for some relaxing reading, this isn’t the one.I’m firmly committed to not spoiling anything for anyone else with respect to this book so I’ve had to dance around the action and plot a bit and I hope you’ll forgive me for it.This book is most highly recommended to anyone that likes Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic, Heroic Parent, Thriller or Mystery stories. Basically, if you like to crack a book that isn’t a Harlequin Romance, you’re probably going to love this. Whichever big publishing house passed up on this certainly missed the boat. This is best seller material and I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see an award or two in Sam Winston’s future.Bravo! Excellent work.
The story was good. The writing style was mixed. I thought Winston’s portrayal of a corporate-controlled America was strikingly close to home, and that his story arc and characters were compelling. The only thing that I didn’t like is that he had a repeated use of sentence fragments, presumably to make things sound poetic. But then they would happen. Every paragraph, half the lines. Words dangling without all the clauses they needed. Like they were looking for something. Someone to see the word-picture. To understand.As you can see, that may be fine now and again but it happened just about every page of the book, and really took me out of the story. Still a worthwhile read, but be prepared for that. I would have given it 4 stars otherwise.
Generally good, more speculative fiction than post-apocalyptic I liked this book. I was expecting something a little different. This is really a distopian novel, a work of speculative fiction rather than the post-apocalyptic book I thought I was buying. That having been said, I liked the book. The protagonist and his efforts to save his daughter really worked for me.The downside? The premise was flawed. At a time when you can buy a lifetime supply of non-hybrid seeds from Amazon for next to nothing and store it indefinitely it is preposterous to imagine that a company with a monopoly on hybrid franken-foods will make even the existence of non-gene engineered food a distant memory.This is a quibble for me. There is a great tradition in science-fiction that takes a perceived problem and pushes it to it’s extreme end. This seems to follow in that tradition. The patenting of genetic material and the growth of corporate power are the issues that the author plays with. It generally works because the plot moves along and the characters are engaging.