The story centres around a group of people trying to escape a nuclear war using a trimaran yacht. The owner of the boat, his hired crew and some family and friends spend the initial part of the book trying to get away from the East Coast of the US, but their journey takes them to a number of other locations in an attempt to escape the usual combination of radioactive fallout, other survivors and disease. Many of the typical elements of a post-apocalyptic adventure tale are present, and although there isn't much in the way of clever or new material, the story was interesting enough to keep me reading throughout around 500 pages.The book's age comes through in the details of which countries are involved, but if you can overlook this then the story is reasonable enough, albeit nothing original. For my taste the book featured a bit too much sailing terminology, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the story. That said, if you really feel the need to read a book about sailing after a nuclear war, then I have two other suggestions that are both superior, in my opinion:'On The Beach' by Nevil Shute'The Last Ship' by William Brinkley
Cold War apocalypses are an acquired taste; one which I've lost. They seemed so bold, honest and edgy then, but so lame--even silly now. That is partly because they were so over the top with survivalist or social engineering, but mostly because it never happened. But it could have. From the end of World War Two (1945) and certainly after the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) until the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved, much of the world was gripped in a bilateral tug of war with threatened (among other buzz phrases) Mutual Assured Destruction. If MAD or counter-force versus counter-value, Circular Errors Probable and air raid drills mean nothing to you, then neither will this book, originally published in 1984.Today's apocalypses come watered down--the Hunger Games, et al.--but we drank the brew straight in the 70s and 80s, and then--poof!--the Warsaw Pact disappeared. And it all seemed like a bad dream. It was real; we've just forgotten.The story is silly--even by those standards--but the characterization and storytelling is good.An okay read.
What do You think about Long Voyage Back (1984)?
I wanted to give this book three stars because the plot was good and it kept my attention enough to finish it. However, there are some things that really got my knickers in a twist. For one thing, although the book was copyrighted in the early 1980's, the author must have written it in the 50's because the female characters in his novel seemed to have stepped right out of "Leave It to Beaver". At first I was a bit insulted but then it just became comical to read. Secondly, what the hell happened
—Jen
I'm a big fan of apocalypse/post-apocalypse survival stories and for me, this one lands somewhere between riveting/hard-to-put-down and preposterous, even comical. If you haven't read a book like that, give it time... you're bound to encounter something that simultaneously entertains you and makes you raise an eyebrow time and again. The writing is rife with the author's personal -- and dated -- feelings about conflict and most every social issue, and his hippie stylings color the development of every character in the book.Certain events and characters described in this book were predictable, silly, cliche, and downright unbelievable... I got the feeling that the author wrote this novel in a day or two. Yet somehow, the book was a fun, engaging read and I enjoyed it.Not a classic in its genre and not an example of modern literature... just an easy-to-read survival story stuck in the wierdest decade of my own life, the 80's.
—Cary Dunlap
TL;DR: Read this book if you are interested in sailing and survival of a small unlikely group but if you are looking for a likely military story, look elsewhere. While the main starting point of the story is a nuclear exchange which rapidly turns into a global war, including all the trimmings like civil wars, starvation, south-versus-north wars of exclusion and all those horror scenarios often repeated in the 80ies, to me the real story was about a group of people forced to live on the sea, from the sea, and in the meantime avoid killing each other.
—Hakan
