Shelter

I enjoyed this one a lot. It's set in southern England several generations after an apocalypse bought about by an asteroid strike. The picture of a society slowly putting itself back together with quasi-medieval subsistence farming communities strongly reminded me of Richard Cowper's excellent Corlay books. But it's not all some bucolic idyll. A chance meeting and brief scuffle have terrible consequences, as a whole region is dragged into conflict between two families. The resulting downward spiral into violence is expertly plotted. Nobody wants it, but nobody is able to stop it.
Throw a spy, an emerging serial killer and a would be despot into the mix, and it's clear it's not going to end well.
It's all very good fun, exciting, and somehow very English - it put me in mind of a John Wyndham novel, although it is substantially less cosy than his middle class catastrophes.. There are further books to come in this setting, written by other authors, and this has more than whetted my appetite for them. Also, a special appreciation for making my hometown of Plymouth the centre of rebuilding civilisation, although I am not convinced janners are the best candidates for that job....we can but hope Cap'n Jaspers and Ivor Dewdney's survived the apocalypse.