One Is None
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"Two is one and one is none." That wisdom had guided Doug as he prepped the family bunker. If only he had thought more about all that it implied. When the long-awaited apocalypse finally arrives, billions of people are lost and the world is reduced to a lifeless desert. But Doug celebrates. He and his family have survived. That's all that matters. Yet, the bunker he worked so hard to build can no longer protect them. First divided by their choice to leave, an epic storm splits his family even more. On their increasingly fractured odysseys, each of them must navigate around all those who remain: paranoid survivalists, self-annihilation cults, skull-faced militias, and worse. Doug had been certain the world could only get better once it was destroyed. What he had not prepared for, however, were people just like him. An ironic twist on post-apocalyptic fiction, ONE IS NONE refutes the short-sighted obsession with doomsday prepping-a brutal cautionary tale exposing the selfish loneliness at the heart of end-of-the-world fantasies.
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Dystopian novels are arguably my favorite subsection of speculative fiction. There's hardly a larger fire that characters can be thrown into than the end of the world or its aftermath. Unlike many in the genre, One Is None focuses almost exclusively on the aftermath. Only a few well-placed flashbacks feature anything that came before. What also makes author Mark Nihlean's novel unique is that he isn't afraid to make his main characters unlikable.
Most of the adult cast are what I'd describe as being on the fringes of society. Radicals, conspiracy theorists, and “believers” make up large portions of the new population. Not something I often see in literature, this makes sense in reality. The swaths of people most likely to hunker underground for 100+ days without warning and have a place to do so aren't considerably mainstream. That devotion to realism stretches from characters to settings and situations as well, all described remarkably well.
As much as I did enjoy the storylines of the younger members of the main family we follow, I felt there was a disconnect between purported ages and how the characters read. I think the age was kept artificially lower for one character in particular to increase the shock value of certain elements. However, the writing was both visceral and compelling enough throughout most of the novel that such a tactic wasn't really needed.
I fully admit that I was the donkey chasing the carrot throughout One Is None. Hooked in by the premise and the spectacle, I was ravenous for answers to questions many dystopian novels resolve from the beginning. Although I personally would have liked to see more of those questions have answers, I'd still very willingly follow that carrot into a sequel if the author chose to write one.
The author provides trigger warnings for a reason. This isn't a sanitized theme park type of dystopian. But if you think you'll enjoy a darker look at what life would look like after the restrictions of civilization fall and the type of people most likely to survive, I suggest reading One Is None.
