A Review of One Year After, William Forstchen’s Sequel

Author William Forstchen set the world on fire with his frighteningly realistic imagining of what might happen to the United States in the aftermath of a major and coordinated EMP strike.

His novel, One Second After, garnered national attention and even discussions in the halls of Congress for its chilling portrayal of what an EMP attack might look like. Indeed, out of all of the society-toppling mega-disasters that are plausible, a large-scale EMP catastrophe is by far the most likely.

The story continues in his second book, One Year After, following protagonist John Matherson as he leads the surviving residents of Black Mountain, North Carolina, in a shattered nation.

I’ve read the book recently, and I’m offering my thoughts, observations, and takeaways to our readers below…

Spoiler Alert!

If you haven’t read One Year After or the previous book, One Second After, understand that there will be some blatant or inferred spoilers below.

I won’t be going through a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, but I’m not going to pull punches when discussing some pretty significant events from the novel, so consider yourself warned.

Two Years Later, Not One

The title of the novel was actually chosen for a bit of thematic consistency with the first: When the story resumes, we’re actually two past the conclusion of One Second After.

A lot has changed since then, and not all of it for the better…

At any rate, if you are hungry for an immediate follow-up of the events that unfolded at the end of the previous novel, you might be disappointed: There are some mentions of them and explanations in passing, but it is not an immediate continuation.

This didn’t bother me too much as I didn’t get the sense that the first book was leaving too many dangling plot threads at the conclusion of the climax. Besides, when One Year After does take off it moves briskly and we soon get to the crux of the story as it is now.

Black Mountain is still struggling mightily, but conditions are improving despite the harrowing losses the residents have endured…

Despite the town reeling from a massive, coordinated assault by brigands and most modern technology and amenities still being completely unavailable or barely available, things are certainly looking up.

The town’s food supply has been improved and stabilized thanks to the ceaseless labor of young folks and a few smart people who know how to manage crops, among other things.

Electricity still can’t be taken for granted but is working reliably in the town, something that can’t be said for most other towns and cities in the ravaged United States. Even mostly medical care is available.

Basically, if you had to ride out the post-EMP apocalypse somewhere, you would probably want to make Black Mountain your home.

This increased quality of life and genuine community, to say nothing of the base level of harmony between surviving residents, raises the stakes for what is soon to come.

More on that in a minute.

Bigger Picture Problems This Time Around

Throughout the novel, we are given glimpses of what is happening elsewhere in the country and even around the world, although to a very limited degree.

Through the characters, we learn that other American cities and a few towns have organized and survived at a level comparable to Black Mountain. They too are fending off the desperate, the evil, and the tyrannical with pluck and grit.

This raises one of the overarching plot threads of the novel: what remains of America and its people, and should it continue to go on as America always has? Is a new way of living and a new Constitution required?

Matherson and the residents of Black Mountain have a near-religious dedication to what I call America That Was: a 1950s “bald eagle pie” vision of America where saying the Pledge of Allegiance or hearing the National Anthem is treated with the solemnity and reverence of holy rites.

The protagonist is himself something of an author avatar concerning his views of the Constitution as utterly inviolable.

I can certainly appreciate what he’s trying to say with this choice, and what it stands for, but the messaging in the novel is so heavy-handed it came across with all the subtlety of a cannonball. It was blatant and flagrant and often enough to take me out of the story more than once.

Glimpses of What is Happening Elsewhere

Throughout the novel, we also learn that the Western world was targeted specifically by the EMP attack, and interestingly the UK is still very much intact compared to the US.

The EMP weapon intended to send jolly Old England the way of America either went off target, activated prematurely, or was intercepted and affected Eastern Europe instead, which is currently in complete turmoil.

British Broadcasting Corporation radio broadcasts are currently ongoing, and they sometimes end with cryptic codes or phrases, the purpose of which is unknown.

Readers are left to speculate over what it might mean…

Whatever Matherson and the other residents of Black Mountain might think about them, they have no way to definitively figure out what is going on overseas.

In any case, it turns out that the survivors and the protagonist will soon have domestic troubles of their own – and by the score.

Somehow, the US Federal Government Returned

The erstwhile federal government that played a part in the previous book is back in this one, and this time they are done screwing around.

We’re still left truly in the dark as readers as to whether or not the would-be claimants to the levers of power in the US are legitimate remnants of the federal government that was…

…or if they are opportunistic bureaucrats, freelancers, or other interests that have congealed around the vaporized residue of the legitimate federal government and taken over.

In practical terms, it just doesn’t matter.

The same sleazy bureaucrat based out of Asheville that enlisted John’s help in OSA is back with another demand on behalf of his benefactors:

Black Mountain must tender a bunch of young people for enlistment in the new American army so they can be sent to trouble spots around the country and elsewhere. Among these recruits, the protagonist’s elder daughter.

Matherson is incensed and upset at this, not only because his daughter will be grist for the government mill but also because taking the young and capable fighters and workers from Black Mountain will all but certainly lead to the collapse of the town, or at least to serious vulnerability owing to ongoing raids.

The government representative gives Matherson an alternative choice: join the Army yourself to serve as an officer, and we will halve the manpower tithe and spare your daughter from conscription.

Considering what we already know about the government rep, and the fact that he is portrayed as slimier than a fried chicken joint grease trap, we already know how this is going to end.

Readers are correct in this initial assessment, and it ups the stakes by a whole, whole lot. Sadly, this dilemma that the protagonist and ergo Black Mountain was subjected to did not come together in a meaningful way for me.

I will once again circle back and pick up that thread in a moment because it goes horrendously off the rails and nearly ruined the book, but let’s put a pin in it for now.

The “Dark Counterpart” Stuff Did Not Land for Me

One of the major set pieces in the book is the aftermath of a seriously violent attack from raiders, with this band of the damned called Reavers by the residents of Black Mountain.

Deciding that enough is enough, the protagonist himself leads his own retaliatory raid on their base of operations, but it goes sideways quickly and he gets himself captured.

Skipping a bunch of half-baked POW drama, Matherson and the leader of the Reavers eventually have a face-to-face conversation.

It turns out the warlord is actually a former serviceman himself, US Army in fact, and there is a heavy-handed “we are not so different” agreement made between the two men to establish a tense but meaningful peace between the two tribes.

After all, the leader of the Reavers was only trying to survive and provide for his people and their loved ones – just like the people of Black Mountain. Ugh.

This pathos fell flat. I get the distinct sense that author Forstchen very much wanted to give readers the impression that the raider warlord was something of a dark “mirror image” or “photo negative” of the protagonist:

A skilled and capable man, and one who cares very much about his people despite being less bound by strict and dogged adherence to traditional morality.

In any case, we aren’t given any opportunity to explore what could have been an interesting aftermath and consequences of that truce.

That’s because the real bad guys of the story, the new federal government, soon returns to get their due from Black Mountain, and they do so with sound and fury.

We Go From “Realistic Conflict” to “Cartoon Villainy”

Remember how the federal government G-Man gave Matherson a choice that was really no choice at all? Either join us, or all of your young people need to join us.

As you might have guessed, the protagonist essentially tells him to pound sand, and so this power-hungry bureaucrat sets out to make an example out of the humble, honest, God-fearing good people of Black Mountain.

No one, no man, woman, or child, is above the authority of the almighty federal government even in such trying times as these. Especially in such trying times as these…

The G-Man sets out to prove his point and further the beleaguered and tenuous federal government’s unbelievably complex strategic goals by flattening Black Mountain with repeated helicopter gunship strikes.

Yep. In a country that has been sent back to the Pre-Industrial age by an EMP, one where presumably mines, factories, laboratories, assembly plants, and more are all offline or operating at barely-there capacity, this government functionary thinks the best use of the government’s vanishingly limited ordnance is to erase a tiny, peaceful North Carolina mountain town off the map.

The now-literal black helicopters empty their payloads into the town again and again, leaving to refuel and rearm before coming back to do it all over again, ad nauseam.

I’ll tell you; this took me completely out of the book. This was too much to ask of my suspension of disbelief.

How is the G-Man so petty, so short-sighted, so incompetent, so wasteful? How is he even alive if he is this dumb?

Instead of leaving peaceful people be and using those limited resources to wipe out the roving bands of marauders that we’ve been told are out there, or take out foreign troops that are said to be on American soil, he decides to pound rural mountain folk into dust.

Is it supposed to be some kind of vendetta against Matherson personally? Is it “making an example”? If so, how? Who is motivated or cowed by such a thing in a country where almost no one will even know what happened?

I just couldn’t get behind this choice of setpiece showdown. Sure, we need another big battle because danger, death, explosions – all of that is exciting.

But it just reeked of cartoon villainy: the G-Man is doing it because that is what an irredeemably evil bad guy would do, not because he is an intelligent opponent or an antagonist acting according to his own goals and objectives, and doing so in a way that makes actual sense according to what we know about him.

In the end, the residents of Black Mountain prevail over the remorseless and relentless gunships, and the town, or what is left of it, is saved. At this point, I was no longer invested in the characters or what happened to them.

Bottom Line: A Flawed but Fun Follow-Up to OSA

All in all, I would give One Year After a six out of ten on my personal scale. It’s a fun read, but it is a labored one and definitely rough compared to the true gem that the first book was.

For preppers, the first book was darkly prophetic, offering us an all-too-real look at what might actually come to pass. Every chapter left me with questions about my own readiness and what threats I might actually face in similar circumstances.

The problems that the characters faced were small things, even trivial, when society was functioning normally but realistically became life-threatening or life-ending after the event. It was well done speculative fiction!

This book, simply stated, is not nearly as well put together. It feels rushed, anvilicious in its messaging and themes, and the villains do not make sense in any believable way.

If you want an entertaining post-apocalyptic yarn, it is worth a read, but I don’t even consider it a mandatory one if you are a huge fan of the first novel.

At this point, will I read the third book? Will I read any after that? I’m honestly not sure. This one was such a letdown it has taken the wind out of my sails.

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