After the Storm is a post-apocalyptic sf novel by Hannah Birchwood, Key Dyson, and Raymond Roach. In this setting, the US has broken up into a bunch of smaller countries a hundred or so years after a civil war an environmental collapse, and an implied nuclear exchange. Possibly. There’s a few references to “nuke worshipping cannibals from Detroit” causing problems.
One of those smaller countries is a Fleet of ships in the middle of Lake Michigan, and this is where our story is set. Basically, what happened is a US admiral snitched a bunch of ships and made a refugee flotilla out in the middle of the Lake. Considering the Great Lakes including Lake Michigan have horrible seasonal storms, it kind of illustrates how completely hellish the collapse was. (“Oh yes, I’m going to put a refugee camp in the middle of a lake that is full of deadly seasonal storms and also dead bodies and shipwrecks. So much safer than what’s going on offshore!”)
Our Protagonist is a “military genemod” named Rich who is employed in IT. Because sometimes super soldiers are just very large computer geeks with absolutely no interest in supersoldiering. After barely surviving the toxic and criminal environment of his previous ship he’s sent back to the ship where he previously interned, and he has to learn how to get along with people who are not horribly abusive criminals.
This involves lots of therapy and watching Future Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. No, I am not kidding. The show is called “Family Fleet,” and is used to teach “pro-social” behavior to both little kids and adults. Pity Our Protagonist, he not only has to watch puppets sing about cooperation, but he also has to do homework about it.
After the Storm is a sweet (and kind of steamy in later chapters) story about recovery from trauma. It is also about romance; Our Protagonist makes connections with both a co-worker named Basil and a cute bioengineer named Liam. I enjoyed the developing relations between Rich, Basil, and Liam and how Rich slowly opens up as he recovers from his experiences on the previous ship.
After the Storm has some fascinating world-building, from a social perspective. A lot of the time writers or creators will drop you in the middle of the worldbuilding in a post-apocalyptic or dystopian setting and you have no idea how the setting got from point A all the way to point C. With After the Storm, it’s really easy to see the origin point and the result. We learn about how the Fleet was founded, and about the cultural mores and customs of its citizens. The writers are good at dropping little details of worldbuilding and backstory, and their character interaction and banter is top-notch.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who likes science fiction romance with a lot of plot and excellent worldbuilding.
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