twentytwelveLet me go ahead and admit that I was worried this book would be terrible. Not because of anything related to the book itself, but because the author reads my blog and comments regularly. I figured it was unlikely to suck completely, because his own blog is well written and entertaining, but the fear lingered. Luckily, that turned out to be mostly unfounded.
As you can guess by the title, twentytwelve concerns the near future, a nightmare of a fascist England where leaders openly praise Hitler and anyone nonwhite or Jewish is hunted down and exterminated. The hero, his mom, his half-black daughter, and various others scratch their way across Wales in an attempt to make it into Ireland, land of the (fairly) free. They dodge brutal cops of various sorts, fall in and out of captivity, and so what they can to stay alive and together. An altogether worth it story.
My main criticism comes down to style. I could see in the writing that Keogh is a lawyer by trade. He doesn't fuck around with a bunch of flowery descriptions - the narrative is done in a very "just the facts" style. On the one hand, it keeps the adventure clipping along. On the other, I feel like we miss out on some characterization and motives. All the good guys are resolute, willing, and quiet in their suffering. Maybe it's that "stiff upper lip" Britishism coming out.
The text could also have benefited from a good going over for small flaws, the kind of thing an author can't see after rewriting a novel too many times. A few too many cases of Keogh using the same word over and over in a paragraph kept sort of bumping me out of the story. With this kind of tale to tell - worth reading both as a caution and as simply a "what will they do next?" adventure - a good editor could have made all the difference.
final thought: I suggest this one. Read it now before the government bans it.
