A solar flare wipes out the power grid, leaving the world without electricity. No vehicles are operational, no trucks moving food and fuel to large cities, basically everything is offline.
The weather is also crazy, with tornadoes, floods, hail, and killer lightning. Our hero, who remains nameless till the very end, is in Atlanta when everything hits the fan. This is basically his epic story of how he escapes the city, and makes it home.
The man with no name lost someone a few years earlier, and has since become a prepper, and a one-man killing machine. I couldn't decide if he was more like Bruce Lee, the Terminator, or Batman. Maybe superman. On his Epic Quest For Home, he goes around rescuing others, on the say-so of his dead girlfriend, whom he still speaks to.
Still, it was fairly well-written, except for the overuse of the word 'coward', and way too much testosterone.
Results: ok. A little too macho for me.

This is one of the best books yet. It appears Mother Nature is letting us know that we are not in control. There is no electricity, batteries do not work, cars do not run. It is almost like going backward into time, however, there are now looters (or he calls them cowards) people who are killing the innocent for food, sex and drugs. The weather is unpredictable, ice storms, wind, tornadoes, etc. He left Atlanta to head to Georgia where his family lived at one time. He has 125 miles to travel on foot and keeping g his eyes out for cowards also g the way. He kills some cowards that were setting people on fire, he meets an elderly lady along the way, he saved her dog, they talked and she asked him where he was going, at that she invited him to stay overnight to rest up before he heads out in the morning. He then comes upon a house with a mother and 3 daughters that are being attacked, he ends top killing the 4 men that were attacking them, helps to safe guard their house before setting out again, he enters a house where an over weight man's lives and the man begs him to go in search of his wife and daughter. Have to read to find out more here. He encounters a horrific storm and obtains injuries, then he is picked up by a sheriff and treated. He eventually makes it to his destination (a house his dad built) and secures the house, plants a garden, then he buries all the belongings that have memories, grabs his guns and heads to his Uncles house, on the way he is in a shootout, ends up killing a girl that must have been 14 years old, yet he gets wounded with buckshot throughout his body. He finally makes it to his Uncles house who embraces him, gets him a doctor, he meets all kinds of people. You must really read the book, there is so much that happens. And I'm not going to say you might cry around the end. And laugh when you hear Bruce and the 92 year old man talking. That was hilarious. You will love all.ost every character in the book. I cannot say enough good about it. Great book, really good Author.

Like that boy who sees dead people in the "The Sixth Sense", our first-person protagonist in "Wanted" communes with the spirits of the dead as he traverses an increasingly ravaged post-apocalyptic land in this EOTWAWKI novel.

Unlike most of the genre, Borton does not try and explain what has happened to club Humanity back into the Dark Ages, he just sets the scene of mother Nature running rampant and has his crazed hero go with it. And this is a hero to be reckoned with. Having learned the lesson of 'not having a plan' from a previous city-wide blackout, our tall, dark and handsome man sets about improving his survival skills with lessons in shooting, knife fighting and carrying a pack full of provisions. He also dials his conscience to neutral; not that he is immoral, just realistic enough to know that the niceties of society are persona non grata when the lights go out and the 'cowards' come out to play. Because he is that more ready with his guns, knife and fists, he generally survives where nice people don't when the EOTWAWKI event occurs. Indeed, the body count starts early and keeps climbing right to the closing pages.

The protagonist's continued, vivid interactions with dead people was interesting and off-putting by turns. He is deep into psychosis before the book begins and it grows worse with each difficult decision he makes. Borton makes it clear that our hero knows his visions are not real and that these conversations are really with himself, but some of them are just creepy. Like finding the Malpaso Man wore dresses in his holidays, it did not fully accord with the general motivation or expectations of a EOTWAWKI hero character. He seems masochistic in both emotion and action on a number of occasions, but he is probably more realistic for all that than other accidental EOTWAWKI hero's. Perhaps being so well prepared skewed his brain in some fashion? I don't know, but mostly I overlooked his crazy, creepy mind-games because the basics of the story were so well put together.

Borton has an excellent turn of phrase for events, but I found a lot of the dialog stilted and formal. I also felt a lot of the dialog was realistic, and in some cases both from the same characters, which is why I went four stars instead of five. With regard those events, they are about as realistic as any other example of the genre and having Mother Nature exacting revenge allows for all manner of crazy - and probably impossible - climatic events that keep the plot ticking over. Add in a number of on-the-run relationships, then a stronger set piece at the end, and for the most part the story arc is satisfying.

There is considerable repetition in the hero's thinking throughout his quest, and I can understand why other reviewers noted that. Probably Borton could have cut fifty or so pages without ill effect, but honestly, it's not a show stopper for me. The extra pages gave our hero that much more time to kill more cowards and save another damsel in distress.

Borton writes sufficiently well that I was engaged by "Without" from the first few pages and that interest was maintained until the end. His hero is crazy enough that he does not do all the obvious things, which adds quite a bit of tension and suspense to what is a very basic premise. There were some laugh out loud moments, so it was not all 'Oh woe is me' Bleak House; indeed, for the most part, the hero is anti-'Oh woe is me'. If you like EOTWAWKI this is definitely worth a read.