Customer Reviews

THE FALL OF THE SHELL

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This is the fourth and central work of a series about the spiritual and technological rebirth of a future North America wrecked by nuclear war. Overtly the setting is straight after-the-bomb, but the construction of societies which each have their own strengths and weaknesses is nice, and the overall flow of the stories is well done.
This novel is the best of the series. Williams is a poor creator of setting and character, but the novel moves so gracefully through the plot that many readers will forgive him his failings. The title resonates over and over through events as symmatrical as the huge stone cities of the Pelbar, the one human society in central North America to have continued as an urban civilization.
As a literary engine, this is one of the finest fantastic stories I have ever read. Worth a try. If you like it, try the others.

This author, better than any other I've ever read, has an ability to convey so much while saying so little. This book weighs in at 210 or so pages, but feels more like an epic journey. To put it mildly, Paul O. Williams is the exact opposite of Stephen King when it comes to brevity. While Mr. King may spend four pages describing the clothing someone has on, the sunlight as it filters through the trees, the thoughts the person had before standing up, sitting down, and standing back up again, Mr. Williams gets straight to the point and says all of that in one short, concise sentence. Far from taking away from the quality of the writing, I feel that it greatly enhances the story, which is why I read the books. I don't read to marvel at how great of a writer an author is, I read to be enraptured in a story. Mr. Williams succeeds at doing this. I am four books into this series, and I will definitely read to the end.