Reading "Survive" feels like wading through a fever dream of unchecked masculinity, all chest-thumping bravado and seething distrust of government. The book serves up a heavy dose of rugged, off-the-grid grit, with a protagonist who treats survival like a one-man war against a vague yet ever-menacing bureaucracy. But for all its bristling intensity, this novel unravels long before it reaches anything close to a coherent end.

A lot of the discomfort here comes from our narrator's worldview, especially regarding his wife. He has all the warmth of a winter frost when it comes to her, his contempt almost palpable. Yet, contrast this with his absurdly sentimental devotion to his dog, a love so fawning and overblown that it borders on parody, and we're left with a man whose character feels, at best, deeply misaligned. Perhaps it's an intentional contrast, but whatever the aim, it paints a bleak portrait of someone who seems to reserve his humanity only for creatures with a wagging tail.

Structurally, the book tries to pull a fast one, starting as one thing - a typical survival dystopia - and swerving wildly two-thirds through into what amounts to a thinly veiled manifesto on militia movements and conspiracy. It's not the politics that grate, mind you, but the way the plot all but shudders to a halt as it makes room for this screed. By then, any semblance of narrative consistency is abandoned, leaving readers scrambling to find meaning in what's left.

Then there's the opening, the morally murky events that our protagonist accepts with a disconcerting shrug. His casual attitude to violence and ethical compromise leaves us wondering: are we meant to see him as dense, hypocritical or just plain cruel? Whatever it is, it doesn't make for comfortable reading. Spending 200 pages in the company of this man, with his selective morality and almost nihilistic view of humanity, felt less like an adventure and more like an exercise in endurance. I'll not waste my time with the rest of the series.

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