Title: Day One
Series: No
Author: Nate Kenyon
Published: October 1, 2013
Format: Galley from NetGalley & St Martins Press
Cloverfield meets The Terminator in this story of one man's escape from New York City as technology becomes sentient
Scandal-plagued hacker journalist John Hawke is hot on the trail of the explosive story that might save his career. James Weller, the former CEO of giant technology company Eclipse, has founded a new start-up, and he’s agreed to let Hawke do a profile on him. Hawke knows something very big is in the works at Eclipse---and he wants to use the profile as a foot in the door to find out more.
After he arrives in Weller’s office in New York City, a seemingly normal day quickly turns into a nightmare as anything with an Internet connection begins to malfunction. Hawke receives a call from his frantic wife just before the phones go dead. Soon he and a small band of survivors are struggling for their very lives as they find themselves thrust into the middle of a war zone---with no obvious enemy in sight.
The bridges and tunnels have been destroyed. New York City is under attack from a deadly and brilliant enemy that can be anywhere and can occupy anything with a computer chip. Somehow Hawke must find a way back to his pregnant wife and young son. Their lives depend upon it . . . and so does the rest of the human race.
*sigh* What do I say about this book? Man, I really really really wanted to like it. I was so excited for it, Day One sounded like an ideal read for me. But I didn’t like it, I just couldn’t get into it.
The main character, Hawke, was pretty interesting. He is a hacker turned hacker journalist, so he’s had a pretty interesting past. The problem for me is that his present just wasn’t all that exciting for me. He’s married to Robin, who is seemingly above him in social status, but they loved each other. They have one child and one on the way, and she is possibly having some health issues regarding pregnancy. The book starts with them not really getting along, and then he leaves for work and the shit hits the fan that same day.
My greater issue was with things like the coffee pot exploding of its own volition and office machinery on the “attack”. Really? Things like that happened early on, and I was unable to get past them. I tried for a bit, I was really into the escape from the corporate building that John Hawke was in. But some of the characters just didn’t click well with me. Weller, for instance. I can’t really think of anything I liked about this man in the short time I knew him.
There was one character I was interested in seeing more of – Hawke’s creepy neighbor. This guy really seems like a creeper in the biggest sense of the word. But I didn’t make it far enough to see his appearance in the story.
Maybe it was a timing issue. I’m not totally against picking this book up again later, to see if it fits better. If there are people who are into this type of book, I would definitely still recommend it to them. It’s getting five star ratings across the board. But for me? Ehh, it just wasn’t for me.
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