Noise

Reminiscent of the Lord of the Flies merged with Deliverance

When the country converts from analog to digital, Salvage broadcasts underground stations in the lower frequency airwaves. It tells the populace what to do to survive in the face of the collapsing society and the words are bound in the Book. In the college town of Slade, Texas, best friends Hiram and Adam collect the wisdom of the Salvage so they can be ready when the collapse of American civilization occurs.

The predicted Event happens leaving America rudderless as the country declares bankruptcy and the government loses all control. The Narrator calls himself Hiram and Adam renames himself Levi. They gather other people amongst the homeless of the dead society to go to Amaranth. It is an isolated place where they will be safe. Other groups join them on the bloody journey to the Promised Land.

Reminiscent of the Lord of the Flies merged with Deliverance, Noise is a deep look at civilization spinning out of control into anarchy before leading to a rebirth. The cast is solid with plenty of violence and gore. This makes the aftermath effort to get to Amaranth feel plausible. Darin Bradley writes an entertaining futuristic cautionary thriller as out of the death of America rises the Phoenix of a new order.

Harriet

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Saphs note

Yo guy that was an awsome concert worth every buck flip this note over and u will find a couple hundered dollors for a tip yo thx again ~$aphire

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Attack of the 50 foot whatever

Icaruss:We got a fan letter!!!!we hit the big time!!!(starts jumping up and down) everyone else:*facepalm*

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You need to read this one. Incredibly timely!

I sat down to read this book and read the whole thing in about 3hours. It moves along very quickly and the author has a great talent of leaving the end of each chapter hanging so that you have to turn the page to see what is going to happen next.

I have many books in this genre, like, the Lord of the Flies and The Road. This one is scary because it is written now during the current economic crisis. For example, in The Road, you never really kinow what happened to the country-just that it was something bad. In Noise, you know exactly what is happening, what lead up to it, and what the outcome is going to be. I don't know whether the author intended to release the book during the current economic crisis or it was just good luck. But, if you cosider some of the things that happened during the Great Depression, and what is going on now, you really can see how the story could become real-scary.

Starrfyre

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Towards a Literary Apocalypse . . .

Let me tell you what Darin Bradley has achieved with Noise.

He's taken an Event, perhaps socio-political, definitely economic, in its scope and placed a pair of friends, Hiram and Levi, in medias res in their small Texas town. See, they've seen the writing on the walls--the wildstyle tagging along with the hacked analog transmission from the nebulous collective known as Salvage Country--and realized this is the End, friends. With a small band armed with information, weapons, and new names, they know it's time to make it to Amaranth, their quasi-mythical retreat.

See, it's all about your Group having a Place. So says the Book. Darin has managed to weave the get-out-of-Dodge narrative for Hiram et. al an with apropos sections of the Book, the bible at the beginning of the end. Bradley has waxed meta with Book in situ, giving the audience a chance to following along with Hiram's Group as they leave their apartments, cross town, and find their Place in a world in breakdown mode--all with the Book as artifact. The narrative is further interspersed with flashbacks of Hiram's childhood, and the particularly resonant ones were of the Boy Scouting days, the leadership skills acquired and, perhaps, taken for granted until the young adult Hiram falls back on those selfsame skills and more.

No one is who they seem, either, among the major players. They've taken new names, new identities forged as they create a new Place in this new and broken world. Anyone's skills belong to the Group; the person becomes the new economy. The old world is dying, and no one--no one--speaks their old names or of their old lives.

The pacing is quick, maybe quicker than one might expect in a multilayered narrative such as Noise presents. However, Darin has more than made up for it with an understanding that clean prose and lyrical prose need not be padded prose. As far as characterization is concerned, you might have known a Hiram or a Levi. You might have played D& D and rolled some D20's with them.

But you probably never had to see them roll the hard six and run someone through with a sword or shoot them in the face.

Noise isn't about a ragtag band of survivors holing up and waiting it out. It's about the exodus, the egress from Eden and the concomitant Fall. It's about the subsuming of personal identity into the usefulness and forward progress of the group's identity. It's about letting your past drown in a pond. Your Orphean descent into the Underworld. Your Amaranth where you will put down new roots in a faraway place.

Darin gives the reader plenty of explode-y action and up-close-and-personal scenes one might expect of an apocalyptic novel, but one thing's for certain: the characters are the heart of this book, and after reading Noise, don't be surprised to find yourself echoing a mantra of the Group in Noise:

"You did the right thing."

Here's hoping this is the first of many sharp, smart, resonant novels from Darin Bradley

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