Review: Fallen by Traci L. Slatton

Title: Fallen
Author: Traci L. Slatton
Genre: Scifi-Dystopian
Series: After Trilogy #1

Paperback, 240 pages

Publication: July 27th 2011 by Telemachus Press

Source: I received a review copy form the author in exchange for a honest review.

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When the world ends, all that is left is love....

As chaos descends on a crippled Earth, survivors are tormented by strange psychic gifts. In this time of apocalyptic despair, love is put to the test. One woman with mysterious healing power guides seven children to safety. Charismatic Arthur offers her a haven. Slowly Emma falls for him. But at the moment of their sweetest love, his devastating secret is revealed, and they are lost to each other. Will Emma stay with him?

Fallen is set in a post-apocalyptic France. Our main heroine Emma was with her daughter Mandy on a business trip when the world ended. A mysterious and lethal mist came out of nowhere and devoured everything in its path. The mist seems to be attracted to metal; wiping out buildings, technology and even people that come too close to it. It’s been approximately 10 months since the mist emerged and Emma is doing her best to take care of her daughter and 7 other children that she found/rescued along the way.

The book grabbed my attention immediately when Emma’s daughter Mandy is cornered by the mist and Emma is prepared to shoot her if the mist touches her (once the mist touches you, you pretty much start to melt and die a slow painful death).  Right off the bat you see how dreadful the situation is for Emma’s group; they’re trying to stay alive by finding whatever scraps of food that hasn’t been tainted by the mist and at the same time avoiding the band of cannibal rogue men.  Emma is a tough character, and is willing to do anything to protect her ‘kids’. She pretty much puts everyone above herself, and I admire that about her but…within the first chapter or two she meets a group of men scavenging for supplies and bargains her body to the group’s leader. I didn’t like that. As much as it pains me to say as the book progresses, the character and story didn’t get much better…well not till the very end.

Arthur, the group leader takes Emma up on her offer and brings her and the children into his all male camp.  Arthur at first treats Emma like a piece of object and his property( I mean, she did offer her body).  Emma continues to take care of the children and tidies the camp here and there but for the most part I saw her as nothing more than Arthur’s sex slave. Speed forward a couple months in the book, Arthur and Emma’s relationship is still questionable. She sees their relationship as a means to an end, till she reunites with her HUSBAND in Canada but Arthur is falling for Emma and falling hard. Most reader thought their relationship was cute-sweet…I didn’t. Arthur is a controlling alpha guy; he makes Emma report to him everything she does, and gets scary jealous when she interacts with other male members of the camp. At one point when Emma reveals to Arthur that she is in fact still married, he tells her his word is law and if he deemed her divorced…she’s divorce.  I don’t know.  I just think it was a mess-up relationship to begin with and it didn’t help that both of them kept secrets from another. As for the other characters, they all didn’t make a strong impression as I hoped. The characters still needed a lot of development, but I expect it will be better as the series goes on…as this book was super short, only about 250 pages. 

The most interesting aspect of the book is the mist and the different abilities that people inherited ‘after’ the world ended. For example Emma is able to heal people (to an extent) when she puts her hands on a person, Arthur is able to control the mist, Dermatologist/Doc James is able to see inside a person like x-ray vision and so on. Fallen sounded like a paranormal (IMHO when I first read the synopsis) read but once readers discover the truth behind the mist; people powers/abilities…it turned out to be scientific. I don’t really know how I feel about Fallen. It honestly didn’t start out so great, the middle dragged a bit and it wasn’t till the end that I found myself interested again (not since the first paragraph of the book). Fallen had so much potential to be that great story but it was missing something (what I’m not so sure) and the two main characters weren’t that likeable. 

Bottom line, Fallen wasn’t bad or great. I like the idea of the book and some of the characters but I think that if the book was a little longer, it would have made a difference (like to get to know the other characters better…there were too many characters to keep track of, from different groups).