First Fate: A gripping disaster survival thriller (Waves of Fate Book 1)

4 Stars is generous … and that’s just because I finished the story, so that must mean something. ??*I* also got the genre wrong, so that’s on me. More on that below.Plus, it takes place on the sea. 1/2 Star just for that.And - this is my SECOND try after only making it through 50% the 1st time & giving up due to the hum-drums.So what makes it a slow ship to Dullsville?As other reviewers have noted - the traumatic backstories of Every. Single. Character. …… doesn’t help.It’s not just their similarities of having past trauma that’s so much the issue, however. It’d be ok if mentioned, or briefly reviewed. But, it’s not. It’s discussed, or thought about - actively - in each character’s scenes. Repetitively.I’d even go as far as to say that for some characters, there’s perhaps even MORE repeated past (over & over ….) than anything “fresh.”Just the same old, “when I was 8 & kidnapped…” or “every time my grandmama drank a bottle of tequila in the swamps & started wrestlin’ them gators…” &, “I’m the worst mother in the world….”Urgh. I have these people’s “lines” memorized after reading this book.Lastly, it just sort of … plods along, in pacing. Don’t have to worry about reading late into the night with this book, or any of that heady anticipation! Nope.Just chugs along at a slow pace, to add to the painful repetitive inner thoughts of the characters.Although, to be fair, I did just read the bio of the author and have a clearer understanding of her writing style. As well as my (unfounded) expectations.I am a decade-long, diehard, 3-5 book/week, reader of the apocalypse genre. Plus military, war, science, medicine, murder mystery, sci-fi, ….. basically very super-charged, action packed, adrenaline fueled, often chock-full of facts & research, reading.And never does a romance, nor a “happily ever after” book intentionally land in my lap.Had I known this was a, “romantic suspense” (errr… sans the suspense?) story, I never would have begun. Twice. LolBut at least now I understand why it reads the way it does.I DO have to commend the author for all of her use of “swear words” (i.e., REAL TALK) which would occur between adults in such situations. Nothing is as aggravating as when adult books are written in, “aw jolly gee my foot just got blown off!” language. It pulls you right out of the story with the absolute unbelievably of it.And her use of emotional language is perfectly on point. You know EXACTLY what every one of these passengers are going through on all levels; physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, etc…The author’s world building is pretty solid. I can really “see” it all in rich detail. Even in the pitch blackness. The only issue, again, is quite a bit of unneeded repetition. I only need to be shown that the upper jogging track has been utterly ripped out, & what is left behind - oh, maybe just once or THREE TIMES TOPS! lolI AM going to start Book 2. Just because the characters are still on the sea.But if we leave the sea …. &/or the storyline is just a long continuation of regurgitating “the traumas of the past,” I’m out.I’m ALREADY bored, just thinking about it ….Just SOME action … please….Fingers crossed! Lol

Fast paced and moving, this book keeps you on the edge of your seat. Great read and looking forward to the story continuing.

The whole book is a page turner, it was hard to put down. The plot is great, cruise ship vs EMP and the fight for survival. The only thing that kept me from rating this as 5 stars is the language, specifically Zion’s. I think we could have seen him as a tough, heart hardened guy without all the foul language.

Overall a good book. Some things were hard to believe. For example: What are the odds of a plane striking an ocean liner after an EMP? A rogue wave also?

I was on a cruise when I started reading this and can totally see how this could happen. I enjoyed it and am starting book 2 immediately

I was hooked from the first few words. It is an amazing journey and I can not wait to continue on to the next chapter. Just AMAZING!!

That was a good book! I enjoyed reading it. But now I have to buy the next in the series to see what happens. Great plot. Plenty of action and a few heroes thrown in.

I have read many EMP books but I must say this twist make it new and fresh! Good job Kendal Talbot

Rating 1.5 stars.I kinda knew what I was getting into when I picked this book up - it's a B-movie in novel form. I love adventure stories told on board cruise or container ships, so I was drawn to this story on those grounds.I like B-movies for two reasons. Firstly, there's a lot of fun action. Secondly, there's a lot of terrible dialogue and logic-defying behaviour to have a chuckle at. Kendall Talbot delivers both in her novel.So why a low-star rating? Because it's a badly written book. The prose is absurd, the characters are mostly deplorable, the dialogue is unnatural and the plot is all over the place."It was like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie" - She says in her dystopian apocalyptic novel.Every character's arc is heavily weighed down by reminiscences of previous traumas that have ZERO bearing on the present story, with the arguable exception of Maddy who at least can draw some kind of similarity with her past. But even that is heavily overworked. I've always felt that if an author has to write "but he pushed those thoughts aside", then they've probably just written something unnecessary. That happens a lot here."It wasn't time for reflection. It was time for action." Oh, but you know the time for reflection will be around again soon enough.An especially annoying feature is that in Zon's chapters, the narrator voice switches to Zon's voice, with all of the apostrophes replacing 'g's, reference to "his-self" and other speech tics that come with it. On the one hand, this saves the author some embarassment, because the stupid prose can be blamed on the character. On the other hand, this book is written in third person, so why is there a different narrator voice for different characters?The book is in desperate need of an editor. At one point, the cruise liner is described as a "seventy-ton ship" which is clearly not much weight for a cruise ship. Later it's descibed as weighing seventy-thousand tons, so I guess the first one was a typo. A typo in good company, by the way. Along with other silly mistakes like mixing singular and plural: "As much as Gunner prayed that there were people still alive in that section, he also hoped that there wasn't".Talbot has a very distinctive toolbox when it comes to imagery.Time is very often counted in "beats". Volume of space is quantified in terms of how many dump trucks you could fit into it (or, one time near the end, Zon's prize alligator).In more than one place, pain is quantified in wasp-stings ("The pain was like a dozen wasps simultaneously stinging her left eye"), as well as other types of torment ("The unanswerable questions kept coming, stinging with random brutality, like a wasps' nest had exploded in his brain").She often mentions people "snagging" their eyes on things, which I hope is just her way of saying they've spotted something. Especially since at one point Madeline snags her eyes on a hole in some debris.When it comes to sound, demons feature heavily:"The ship slumped into the next swell, but when it shuddered this time, it came with a horrific noise, like a demonic scream""The squeals around him were like those of strangled demons".Having never heard a live demon myself before, I found myself disadvantaged as a result.There are plenty of other extremely clumsy similes and images that just aren't fit for purpose."The shaft trembled as if it'd been hit with a million-watt Taser""Despair stabbed at him like thousands of ice picks""A petri dish of diseases could spread through the remaining passengers like wildfire""the supply-filled raft bounced against the side of the hull like a giant orange football""Nausea wobbled in his throat""She spied a shattered plumbing pipe" (I understand the relationship between pipes and plumbing, but what is a "plumbing pipe"?)"Forcing the cramps to the back of his brain" (seems like a terrible place to keep cramps)Perhaps my absolutely favourite is: "He slapped at the wet fabric...and it sounded like he was slapping wet toast."I don't know about you, but I can more readily access the sound of wet fabric being slapped than the sound of wet toast.The most infuriating part was when the captain tasks Gabby with giving a morale-boosting speech to the survivors...you know, on account of her experience as an ambulance-chasing journalist and news anchor. Gabby then proceeds to give the WORST speech you can possibly imagine (summary: I know most of us are dead, but just look at that sunset!) and the captain remarks to himself: "Gabby was good. She had the crowd hanging off every word." So the reader immediately disregards the garbage they just read, and knows the speech was good because the captain thought so.Several times, Talbot shoe-horns in some fact she's picked up during her research that add nothing to the plot, such as the comprehensive inventory of a standard life-raft. A favourite of mine was in the doctor's letter, where he outlines his calculation of how many parts-per-million of carbon monoxide were probably in the air when all the people died, then ties off his letter with "Please tell my wife and children that my last thoughts were with them". (Them and pointless carbon monoxide calculations.)The romantic subplot between Madeline and Sterling is nauseating, especially when she contemplates whether they would see each other again after escape and "Suddenly, she wasn't sure she wanted to go any further". Seriously? And by chapter 26, she's still enjoying "his lovely tropical scent" even though they've been swimming through oily water. At one point, Madeline has "pirouetting butterflies" in her stomach, then a page later she has buzzing bees in her gut, then a few paragraphs later "The bees in her stomach morphed into butterflies". Sounds like a serious medical problem.When they think they've found a way to safety, "Sterling's face lit with a curious mix of relief and elation." Why curious? Relief and elation are the most understandable emotions in that moment.But let nobody say Talbot can't be poetic: "images of bodies floating face-down in a churning ocean were ingrained in his brain like a hideous dark stain". Because, as the saying goes, 'dark stains in Spain are ingrained mostly on the brain'.And Talbot knows that you see a person's love, not just in their eyes, but specifically in their irises: "her breath was taken away by the love in his chocolate irises". (I recall I bought a box of chocolate irises in an optometrists gift shop once.)And other times I just chuckled at unfortunate choices of phrase. "Sterling pressed his fingers to her neck and then, after a few heartbeats, he shook his head and stood". Whose heartbeats? Not the woman whose pulse he was looking for. No, these beats are Talbot's baffling standard unit of time.I don't want to drop spoilers, but the closing image mentions people swimming in the sea recreationally and for hygeine. "It had taken three long days in the raft before Sykes had agreed to let people swim in that area if they wanted." Three days sounds like a cautious length of time...until you consider that it's taken the survivors ONLY three days to forget about the GODDAM SHARKS they'd seen in the water during the mass-funeral.As you can tell, I enjoyed this book immensely, but for mostly the wrong reasons.

EMP at Sea. Holiday cruise liner halted due to the EMP no lights, electricity, water, communications, nothing on board works. Those with pacemakers or anything electrical keeping them alive drop dead on the spot. Know one knows why. Captain Nelson died on the bridge due to his Pacemaker. Now Captain Gunner is in Command of a crippled ship. But watch out as another disaster strikes them.

Really enjoyed this story - an apocalyptic one that sets a different scenario to others I’ve read. Good characterisations and scenarios made it easy to get completely involved with the story. Only slight criticism is grammatical - using ‘less’ instead of ‘fewer’ and ‘his/her’ instead of ‘he/she’. Definitely getting the rest of the series!

I really enjoyed reading this book and in fact as soon as I read the last page I ordered the next book in the series and started reading that. Without giving anything away, be wary of the next cruise you take. The characters were believable and the doctor/nurse in a wheelchair was an unusual twist. I hated putting the books down. Its such an unusual plot and I keep wondering how the series will end. Thoroughly recommend this series.

You know those movies that are really not your thing, because of who's in it and the trailer you've seen? The sort of thing you'd never normally watch, but there's nothing else on and, hey trashy movies can be entertaining sometimes right?That. But a book.It's not a bad read if you can suspend your disbelief, particularly if you've ever been near a ship. Or the sea. Or water.(You can't just 'add' an engine to a cruise ship, and they already have more than one anyway. And I think the captain would have spotted that container ship coming before it collided)