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    The Wasteland Saga: Three Novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River
    Unavailable
    The Wasteland Saga: Three Novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River
    Unavailable
    The Wasteland Saga: Three Novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River
    Ebook820 pages12 hours

    The Wasteland Saga: Three Novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River

    By Nick Cole

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Nick Cole sends us on a suspenseful odyssey into the dark heart of post-apocalyptic America in this three-part adventure

    Forty years after a devastating thermonuclear Armageddon, mankind has been reduced to sal-vaging the ruins of a broken world. In a style that's part Hemingway and part Cormac McCarthy's The Road, The Wasteland Saga chronicles the struggle of the Old Man, his granddaughter, and a mysterious boy as they try to survive the savage lands of this new American Dark Age.

    With the words of the Old Man's most prized possession—a copy of Hemingway's classic The Old Man and the Sea—echoing across the wasteland, they journey into the unknown through three incredible tales of endurance and adventure in a land ravaged by destruction.

    Compiled for the first time in print, The Wasteland Saga comprises Nick Cole's novels The Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, and The Road is a River.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 15, 2013
    ISBN9780062210203
    Unavailable
    The Wasteland Saga: Three Novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River

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    Reviews for The Wasteland Saga

    4/5

    76 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The book follows an old scavenger who decides to leave his community to try and prove he can still be useful in life. After Nuclear War in the US the world as people know it has ended and know one knows who survived. People love in communities and by scavenging.As one of the scavengers our main character is seen as unlucky so he leaves to either prove that he can be still useful or die trying. He travels into the East of the land which everybody sees as being dangerous and finds a religous community who attacks him, a crazy man who tries to kill him and also a city where the supplies will help his community survive.But can he get back to share it, can he get back to show them he is not tainted and what has the journey brought up in the way of memories from his past.
    • 5/5
      Much better than I was expecting. Rises far above the standard post-apocalypse genre. Well drawn characters, and for the most part, deft expository development and an ingenious and poetic ending. Gifts of beautifully rendered imagery and phrasing throughout. Does not feel like 800 plus pages!
    • 5/5
      The Old Man and the Wasteland by Nick Cole is a post-apocalyptic story that lured me in immediately. I love survivor stories and this one is a dandy! Written as an homage to The Old Man and the Sea, author Nick Cole has us follow an old man who has spent the 40 years since the nuclear exchange that brought about the downfall of America (and probably the rest of the world) as a salvager. After he made the mistake of bringing a radio that was radiated back to the village, he has been considered cursed. He decides to lift the curse by taking himself further into the wasteland than usual and bringing home something truly valuable to the village.The main character is well developed and his story of redemption is moving. His journey leads him out into the wasteland desert that is south of Phoenix and west of Tucson. Phoenix was destroyed by the bombs, but the old man isn’t sure about Tucson. As he travels he encounters many adventures that have him fighting for his life. Tracked by a wolf pack, endangered by flash floods, and finally encountering a barbaric tribe, he uses his memory of the Hemingway book to guide him through.The Old Man and the Wasteland was an excellent escape read for me. I loved the story and the character of the old man. Although the author paints a depressing picture of the future, it is not without the hope that mankind will someday rise above the savage level that exists in this story. This grim, introspective story will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it suited me perfectly at this time.
    • 3/5
      Slow but almost compelling is this post apocalypse story of an old man salvaging for his family. His travels through the Tuscon area bring him into many dangerous situations but he finally wins through and gets the fish in the boat.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book. I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories, and this fit the bill nicely! It is a short read (it took me an afternoon of reading) but it felt like a good length. Not too short or too long.

      This is the story of an old man going into the desert wasteland in search of something salvageable for his village. That's it in a nut shell. Although the story is simple it is told in such a good way that I never felt cheated out of any story.

    • 3/5
      Review:Have you ever heard the term Slow Burn? If you haven't, basically it means a steadily penetrating show of anger or contempt. This book is a slow burn. I wanted to like it, I did but the more the pages went on the more disgusted I became. Yet, I went against my better judgement and kept reading. On and on the slow and painful build up went. I kept thinking is something significant going to happen now? What about now? Then to my surprise it's like a light went on and all that built up frustration, annoyance, and anger clicked together. My mind wasn't blown but I did see what the writer was trying to achieve even if the execution failed to impress.If you haven't noticed, The Old Man and the Wasteland is based on The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway. In the book the main character even has a copy that he salvaged on one of his wasteland expeditions. I haven't read The Old Man and the Sea since High School and that was quite a bit ago so needless to say I didn't remember it much. Course if I had, I might of known what type of book I was setting out to read and avoided it in the first place. Anyway that is rather here nor there moving on...Let's talk about some of the technical points of the story.The Writing- Even though I don't remember The Old Man and the Sea the writing still felt very Hemmingway. Is that a good thing though? I say no. Listen, Hemmingway was a brilliant writer but I felt that Nick Cole was trying to imitate him a bit to much losing himself in the process. In places I even had to go back and reread whole sections because parts didn't make sense which leads me back to this being a slow burn type of read.World Building- OK, I will give the Author some credit I actually enjoyed the world building. We get to see some nice glimpses of the before time as well as moments that took place as the disaster was happening. Overall I'd say these scenes were by far my favorite so much that it actually disappoints me that the author chose to write the book he did instead of a unique apocalyptic tale all his own.Now I know I sound like I downright hated this book and to tell you the truth at times I did but I can see glimpses of greatness in between the lines and that spurred me on. One of my favorite scenes takes place between the old man and a "blind" hotel owner. I won't give it away but the scene is great and had some nice twists that broke up the the monotony of the scenes before it.Overall, Would I recommend this book? Yes, but I'd really stress borrowing before buying. You might like it, heck you might even love it, I however wouldn't feel right saying to go buy this book knowing how much I struggled with it. In the the end I did like The Old Man and the Wasteland but it felt like it took to long for me to come to that realization. The above mentioned combined with the overall choppiness in parts causing me to go back and reread whole sections leaves me rating The Old Man and the Wasteland by Nick Cole ★★★. It wasn't bad, it wasn't great, it just sort of exists and sometimes that's the worst book of them all.*Reviewed through Edelweiss. All opinions are my own and I was not compensated in any way for them.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The Old Man and the Wasteland by Nick Cole – This short post-apocalyptic novel takes place some forty-years after the nuclear destruction of the cities in the US. People survive by salvaging through the wasteland. One old man begins a salvaging hike in the baron Arizona wasteland to prove he can still contribute to his small band of survivors. He forages through desert wilderness and abandoned cities while struggling to survive the climate, wild beasts and murderous savages. The old man is a big fan of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, which he mentions often during his difficult and dangerous trek, and this ingenious story is analogous to Hemingway’s novel. This wonderful book is thought-provoking, inspiring and alarming, but also very satisfying. I will undoubtedly read the other books in this series.
    • 4/5
      My expectations for dollar kindle books are never very high, but this book was a revelation. Reminiscent of A Canticle for Leibowitz and The Road, the Old Man and the Wasteland pays homage to Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea. I was unable to stop reading from the moment I started, and was captivated by the well written and paced story of the old man's journey of survival and redemption. Very well done, and worth very much more than the 99 cents I paid for it.
    • 3/5
      This novella is a quick and relatively easy read, and while some of the Old Man's trials stretch the suspension of disbelief just a little too far, the plot manages to move along at a good clip. Unabashedly setting out to retrace the footsteps of McCarthy and Hemingway is a hell of a task to set yourself, and while the author doesn't match either McCarthy for immersiveness and metaphor or Hemingway for economy, he seems to have managed to find his own, very readable voice.That said, there are moments when both the prose and the plot cry out for a good editor, and there are a few typographical errors that I found a little jarring (though not that many more than the $10 Kindle editions of some bestsellers I've read!) But for an independently published, $1 ebook, I'm pretty impressed. I wish there were half-stars to give, as I'd consider this a solid 3.5.
    • 2/5
      I really am going to have to stop buying 99 cent books. I haven't found one yet worth reading, and this is no exception. But, I did read it all the way to the end, which greatly disappointed me. I did get into the story with much effort, but it was tiresome to read. In the beginning every other sentence began with "HE" ... He did this ... He did that. By the title we knew the main character was old, but we never learned how old he was or anything about him, really. The real major problem for me was his punctuation: commas either missing or randomly sprinkled in, sentence fragments with their own period (extremely common). It broke the flow of reading, and I had to try ignoring the punctuation and focus on the words, only. I give the book two stars, because the story kept me reading to the end. Unfortunately, the book left me wondering how it ended.