Noise. I read this in essentially three sittings, though to get the best effect, I feel that it should have been in one. At the break of the second sitting, when the book's pull was at its strongest for me I stopped because I was tired and falling asleep.
When I returned to the book this morning, the magic, that pull the book exerted onto me was gone.
Earlier I was describing this book as The Turner Diaries for Anarcho D&D Nerds and that's wrong, though at my place in the novel, it was a fitting description.
Here's the conceit of the novel.
When the switchover to digital TV happens, the FCC decomissioned the old airwaves which were given over to citizen band broadcasting. Basically turning the air waves into Public Access television. Those channels were taken up by people who foresee a coming collapse of American society and they are trying to inform as many people of how to survive what's coming, turning society into the prepared, called Salvage, and the unprepared.
Salvage is not an organization but rather a collection of in-the-know groups who will self govern based on The Book, which is a survivor society meme, broadcast and retransmitted and altered; added to and subtracted from by each individual cell and broadcaster to make The Book their own.
Noise is about two young men out of college who are involved with Salvage but only as consumers who are using self-determination to carry out their own interpretation of The Book and get to their Place.
Place is kind of a rough concept, but it's essentially where the individual groups will make their own homes post-Event.
I'm hesitant to say much more because this is such a short book that I don't want to rob the narrative of any of its power, and while by the end of the book I wasn't as high on the concepts and conceits as I was at the beginning, I can't deny that this slim volume isn't powerful.
At least to me.
Included in the book is a seven page author interview which addresses some issues I had with the narrative presented. The author is aware of many issues with the narrative presented, and as the novel is in first person, there is a very strong desire to paint author voice and character voice as being very similar, but the interview does much to dispel that.
In short; read Darin Bradley's Noise.
