BOOK REVIEW: Outpost

Title: Outpost


Author: Adam Baker

Publisher: Hachette

RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781444709032

Release Date: May 2011

Pages: 384



Description:

When the end of the world comes, Do you want to be the first to go? Or the last to survive?

They took the job to escape the world. They didn't expect the world to end.

Kasker Rampart: a derelict refinery platform moored in the Arctic Ocean. A skeleton crew of fifteen fight boredom and despair as they wait for a relief ship to take them home.

But the world beyond their frozen wasteland has gone to hell. Cities lie ravaged by a global pandemic. One by one TV channels die, replaced by silent wavebands.

The Rampart crew are marooned. They must survive the long Arctic winter, then make their way home alone. They battle starvation and hypothermia, unaware that the deadly contagion that has devastated the world is heading their way...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Before writing Outpost, Adam Baker worked as a gravedigger and a film projectionist.

Review:

A dozen people on a mothballed refinery platform, hiding from the real-world and themselves. But when the rest of the world succumbs to a pandemic, they find themselves more alone then even they anticipated and their fight for survival is just beginning. Their enemies are numerous; the ferocious Arctic winter, their dwindling supplies, the grotesque plague victims and, ultimately, themselves.

Of this skeleton crew we get to know just a few in any depth, including Jane the young priest with a personal problem, Punch the young chef with better plans, Rawlins the man in charge, Sian the young administrator seeking adventure, Ghost the Asian 'caretaker', and Nail the diver who likes to pump iron. As we get to know these characters and the few others who play a significant part we learn that almost each one has a past he or she is trying to escape.

Outpost is a well written and a very well paced apocalyptic drama. It is one of those rare novels that captivates from the very first pages, and that with an initially not particularly appealing character. It manages to maintain the drama and build the tension as the plot develops, and as we gradually learn something of nature of the problem that has beset the world.

It is unquestionably a good read, thoroughly engrossing, but it offers little out of the ordinary for this genre; however it you want to kept on the edge of your seat throughout you can't go far wrong with Outpost.