Year One (Chronicles of The One, #1) by Nora Roberts Also by this author: The Liar, The Obsession, Nora Roberts - Key Trilogy: Key of Light, Key of Knowledge, Key of Valor, Time Was (Time and Again: Hornblower-Stone #1), Come Sundown, Shelter in Place
Published by Brilliance Audio, St. Martin's Press on December 5th 2017
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 432
Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 1250122953
ASIN: B074XHRSP5
Goodreads
It began on New Year’s Eve.
The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed—and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.
Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river—or in the ones you know and love the most.
As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.
In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.
The end has come. The beginning comes next.
Buy on Amazon
Buy on Barnes and Noble
#DeadlyVirus #Pandemic #TheOne #MagicalCreatures #Uncannies #NoraRoberts #BrillianceAudio @justjuliawhelan
No one will ever accuse Nora Roberts of a lack of courage. With her latest offering Year One, the first book in her new series Chronicles of The One, she jumps head first into a variety of genres all combined in a book that will make you lie awake at night hoping and praying the apocalypse she describes never comes. First we have fantasy because there are magical creatures both good and bad. Then we have apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic because the world as we know it comes to an end. We also have world-building because those who survive must create a world they can live in. We have action and adventure, romance, horror, and in the spirit of the Christmas season, the birth of The One. The narrative is very detailed with the author describing events and outcomes you may never have considered if we were to actually experience a pandemic with massive loss of life. Even though there have been plagues resulting in huge death tolls throughout history, when you factor in our way of life and our dependence on technology in these modern times, you may begin to get a picture of how it would be to try to operate our industries, our public utilities, our law enforcement agencies and especially our healthcare facilities if our population was decimated by catastrophic illness.  If that picture doesn’t keep you awake at night, nothing will!
Julia Whelan is a gifted narrator who performs male and female voices equally well. Her voices for the male characters are distinctive enough to make you forget that she is a woman. I consider this to be a very special talent that separates good narrators from great ones.
There is darkness in Year One, but there is also light. There is chaos and there is a sense of horrendous loss. In the epilogue, the book comes to a hopeful conclusion with the promise of interesting times to come as the series unfolds. Year One effectively validates Nora Roberts as one of the most creative and versatile authors of our day.
About Nora Roberts
Nora Roberts was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, the youngest of five children. After a school career that included some time in Catholic school and the discipline of nuns, she married young and settled in Keedysville, Maryland.
She worked briefly as a legal secretary. “I could type fast but couldn’t spell, I was the worst legal secretary ever,” she says now. After her sons were born she stayed home and tried every craft that came along. A blizzard in February 1979 forced her hand to try another creative outlet. She was snowed in with a three and six year old with no kindergarten respite in sight and a dwindling supply of chocolate.
Born into a family of readers, Nora had never known a time that she wasn’t reading or making up stories. During the now-famous blizzard, she pulled out a pencil and notebook and began to write down one of those stories. It was there that a career was born. Several manuscripts and rejections later, her first book, Irish Thoroughbred, was published by Silhouette in 1981.
Nora met her second husband, Bruce Wilder, when she hired him to build bookshelves. They were married in July 1985. Since that time, they’ve expanded their home, traveled the world and opened a bookstore together.
Through the years, Nora has always been surrounded by men. Not only was she the youngest in her family, but she was also the only girl. She has raised two sons. Having spent her life surrounded by men, Ms. Roberts has a fairly good view of the workings of the male mind, which is a constant delight to her readers. It was, she’s been quoted as saying, a choice between figuring men out or running away screaming.
Nora is a member of several writers groups and has won countless awards from her colleagues and the publishing industry. Recently The New Yorker called her “America’s favorite novelist.”
Leave a Reply