Discussion: Refuge by Richard Herley (spoilers)
 

Hello all.. welcome to the discussion thread for the MobileRead Book Club February 2009 book selection. This was a good one and lots to talk about. So, lets get started.

BOb

I almost gave up on this book after the first two chapters, but I am glad that I did not.

For me, violence, and especially sexual violence, is a turn-off in a story. There has to be something engaging about the story to keep me from setting at aside and reading something else.

I enjoyed the complexity of the characters, and that it was hard to pin them down as a simple archetype.

My biggest problem with the story was the complete refusal of the community to fight for their women and men.

Would a global devastation turn people into such sheep, that they would allow a band of teen agers to control them to such an extent?

I realize the initial atrocities committed would stun anyone. However, once that wears off, its time to take kick some butt and take your lives back.

No one wants to die. But living like that is worse.

I did love the book, and the evolution of the main character.

This book was definitely...visceral.

I'm so glad I read it though. It was a complete departure from what I normally read. I liked reading how people reacted in different ways to the annihilation of the human race. I think usually the story is how the world crumbles (man,, I'm having trouble putting this into words), not how the survivors survive after the fact.

My only question was how are they getting gasoline? Doesn't it degrade after a while?

Anyway, I think the most moving part for me was the hospital scene. That was sad :(

It surprised me, too. The people seemed very passive and timid. How do people with those personality traits manage to survive for over a decade with limited resources?

Maybe there's a tradeoff between the ability to co-operate peacefully, and the ability to co-operate to fight against an external threat?

Co-operating peacefully within a group in order to survive is easy.

You do that or die.

But, if you cannot band together to protect your own, you will surely be eliminated by the first threat that comes along.

Thats what happened to the other villages that these miserable low lifes visited, and what would have happened to this one had it not been for Suter.

I thoroughly enjoyed Refuge, although I wouldn't have minded slightly less detailed info about the guns ;)

I did find it a little odd that England just before the catastrophe (2016ish? Can't remember off hand :o) ) seemed to bear a marked resemblance to an earlier England (definitely 1970s, and probably earlier, although I wasn't around then), but not so much that it was jarring. And it did help suggest why some of the survivors at least were behaving how they did.

I could see how that comunity had survived for so long without a communal backbone though - they had a leader who told them what to do. They had enough will and common sense to flock to some-one who seemed to be in control, but beyond that... Without him around, they were helpless, as witnessed by most of them not wanting to do anything against the incomers after he'd been taken prisoner. And there is also a subsection of the populace, certainly in England, who seem to believe that most teens are the spawn of satan, and only out to cause harm and chaos, but who are too scared of what will happen to them to do anything about it.

The hospital and football ground scenes were the ones that really helped me visualaise how England was - largely because I have a better recollection of them than some of the other places mentioned!

I almost thought that Richard Herley was going to pull a "Jacob's Ladder" ending at the end - I'm rather glad he didn't as I felt the main character deserved better than that :)

I read it at work during breaks, and people kept glancing over my shoulder at the giant 200% zoom and seeing things that shocked them. I don't enjoy books with violence, and there was plenty of it here.

As I read, I kept looking for the types of refuges. The main character is very unsocial and seems to have been that way even before the plague. He had external refuges, especially his home, which he had turned into a fortress. Why did he need so much firepower if he believed he was the last man alive?

He also has his internal refuges. He clings to the memory of a woman who betrayed him. As the story unfolds, we learn that the woman had left him before the plague. Furthermore, he has a continuous dialog with himself, and through these conversations, it is revealed that he does not really believe in himself as a good or brave man.

The townspeople were a disappointment to me also, as they seem to be to the members above. When their refuge, the town itself, was violated, instead of defending themselves, they gave up all power and became, in a way, refugees. They lost the ability to decide how to live as a community.

As a story, I think it would work much better as a short story. Lose all of the boring descriptions of every tree, path, and building. It screams "FILLER." Lose the gay sexual abuse sub-plot because it doesn't add a single thing to the plot. Instead, concentrate on his isolated existence in his fortress home, finding the dead man in the river, and the action throughout the rest of the book. I think it is a good idea and would have a good chance of selling, if it were tightened up.

I really enjoyed the character development of the protagonist. I could really understand where the leader of the pack of jackals became who he was. I think I would have liked a bit more on the development of Suter, though. Some fleshing out of the pre-plague background. He seemed rich, but was it only his parents' money? That sort of thing.

I *really* liked this book. I guess I just like survivor tales. But most are fanciful, with heroes that know no fear, situations that don't seem real.

I loved the realism, or what I perceive as realistic scenarios, real reactions, realistic inclusions of equipment and how real knife fighting goes, dog packs, and physical symptoms of fear. Suter seemed a real person, not the typical male hero character in a book.

This book got my heart beating a few times, a page-turner, uh, page-button-pusher.

4.5 stars out of 5, only because my mind pictures of the scenes just came out dark, I don't know why. Does an ebook reader do that? Or the rainy climate of England? Or maybe just a realistic lack of post apocalypse color? Also a small thing, but I'd like the ending to have occurred a little bit later, maybe a page or two showing a later time, a month or more later. I guess I liked Suter and his flaws, and wanted to see him succeed in this community. (But that kind of ending might have been difficult to pull off without dragging down the story.) I'd round up to 5 if no half-points were allowed.

Good point about the fuel, though maybe diesel lasts longer than gasoline. Ammunition goes bad, though none seemed to in the story.

Good point about the sheepishness of the community in light of the killings and rapes. Maybe a slightly different development of Philip Davies' leadership, or adherence to some passive stricture of their religion could have made it more believable.

I noticed more than usual the differences between the King's English and American English:

My American dictionary failed on
- "louche" (as in louche subversiveness),
- "eidetic" (as in eidetic detail)

Some phrases such as "put paid to" (as in "A few more sturdy kicks put paid to enough of the panel to let him through") are new to me.

And "puissant" was not only abundant in the narrative, but was also spoken at least once by a character. Odd, as I don't think I've ever heard that word before.

I'm going to put full impressions up later. Just an interesting fact, I put this book into LibraryThing (which I do after each book I read now). It wasn't found at amazon, maybe this one was never published? I don't know. So I had to add it manually.

But, 1 other member had it. And we share 19 books. That's alot considering I only have 453 books read/listed.

BOb

Do you remember about the dogs? He truly felt he was the last man alive, and had to forage far and wide for supplies. He had to live 'off the land'. Of course he needed a firepower. Without that, how would he be able to protect himself from animals? Once civilization dies, and the wilds really take over....who know what is going to be out there?

And, I think in the back of his head, he wanted to be prepared for every eventuality. He was a survivor.

Life isn't 'nice'. You may not like stories about violence and sexual overtones, but its occurring all over the world now. People who are too weak to defend themselves will always be oppressed.

People who take advantage of the weak aren't "nice". They come with a full range of sexual and violent appetites that aren't spoken about at the dinner table. The scenes described were very appropriate for this book.

In a world that Mr. Herley speaks of, you are either the victim or the monster, unless you have the guts to stand up and fight for what is yours.

I must say, Suter was starting to annoy me, until I realized.......this is a true hero. He was terrified thruout, yet kept doing what he knew was right. Especially at the end. Heroes aren't like what we see on TV........they cry, they shake with fear. But.......they keep doing what they know they have to.

I don't think it was ever published, except for on his site.

I disagree. I thought the descriptions helped fill in what things might look like after a period of time..

The gay sexual abuse sub-plot does add to the story, because it describes how power is used. Power isn't always about shooting someone. Rape is a power trip from the git go. How did Bex keep his minions in control? By allowing them to do what they wanted...and he knew what they wanted.....he was a brilliant sociopath.

I wouldn't change anything.......except I wondered how these people would react if the same thing happened again, and their new leader was shot right off the bat........

I dropped out for taxes, and coincidently where the sodomites came in.

Thanks for the interest in this! I'd like to answer a few of the queries that have emerged so far.

This book had a very long gestation, and you are not wrong if you think that the England described just before the plague has a somewhat earlier feel than it should. My agent submitted an early draft of the first 15,000 words or so to various publishers; a couple were enthusiastic but didn't think they could make money on it. Times are even tougher for fiction now, so this title has only ever been available as a shareware ebook.

My original intention for the story was to leave the setting open to doubt. There were three possibilities:

1. As described in the final draft.

2. Suter really was the only, and I mean the only, survivor. He has lived alone, in that house by the river, for many years, but now he is sick and dying and the narrative is an hallucination.

3. Suter is a patient in a mental hospital and the whole thing is delusion.

An echo of (2) comes when he is recovering at the end and conflates his room at the rectory with a room in his own house: especially the view from it, including the copper beech. (3) is strongly hinted at in the hospital scene when he is waiting on the stairs. The conflation of the two Helens is part of this too: the man pulled from the river can also be thought of as Suter himself.

In the end I rejected all that as too arty and complicated and just went for the straight narrative, leaving in those few hints and echoes as a way of destabilizing his sanity further.

Suter's obsessive personality would have been the only thing that let him survive alone for so long. Such a man would have gathered absolutely everything and anything he could think of after the plague; his training as a scientist would have made that process even more methodical. His obsession with his former fiancée is a measure of his craziness. After all, what happened between them is nothing unusual or terminally damaging: one just moves on, yet Suter clings to the memory, because it gives him a form of masochistic comfort.

As for the reluctance of the villagers to resist the baddies, that is my view, nowadays, of the English, so much have we been infantilized by the government. Not everyone is like that, of course, but it's the majority reaction. That's why I made Davies a former civil servant. Suter's response to Muriel's report that Bex has confiscated all the weapons -- "Use a brick" -- is completely at odds with attitudes here towards criminals.

One publisher's reader complained that Bex was not evil enough, so in the rewrite I just took my cue from what was in the newspapers -- accounts from Kosovo, Rwanda, Colombia, you name it.

I don't think gasoline or diesel would have become unusable after that period of time, if kept properly sealed. The ammo I don't know about. All the gun stuff came from library books; I know nothing about them myself.

May I also thank those members who have sent me a payment for Refuge? I greatly appreciate your support, but I did waive payment for the purposes of this reading, so please help yourself to another book on the house! Those who didn't mind the violence might like The Penal Colony; those who did should try The Tide Mill.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book, a definite page turner.
The author did a great job of creating a gripping tale in a fully imagined environment. I was thoroughly absorbed throughout. :thumbsup:
Desertgrandma has already made some good points about the way communities and individuals react in lawless circumstances.
This could almost have been a Western - with the 'man with no name' riding into town to protect it from the outlaws.
It was a relief that the violence didn't get more grim than that of the first few chapters - I worried that the ante would keep being upped to even more nauseating levels; but the author resisted that temptation.
There seemed to be a whiff of intellectual pretension in some parts of the narrative (discussion of IQs, use of obscure vocabulary, foreign language snippets etc.) - but it didn't get too annoying, and just about fitted in.
The fetishising of weapons - knives and guns - was depressing, but probably realistic in an environment where they were relied on for survival. (There seemed to be a lot of Kalashnikovs in England; I know nothing about weaponry - but I'd have thought there would have been other types of rifles in our military stores.)
I was hoping Suter wouldn't get sucked into the community at the end - but that's just me. :)
I'd happily recommend it for those not of a squeamish disposition.

There were a few apparent typos in my copy:
Chapter 5
"ward away the brambles in directly front" - think it should be "directly in front".
"'mathematical arrangement of domed druplets"' - think it should be "droplets".

Chapter 6
"Steve made out of the form of two lift doorways" - think it should be "made out the form"
Also, in this chapter, I was puzzled by the word "might" in "Daylight dwindled, might soon be left behind." - it seems a bit uncertain for something so definite.

Oooh that makes things even more interesting, knowing all that.

I'm going to check out your other books (but too bad, I'm donating!)

I think you might need a new dictionary as those are all pretty common words and should be common between British and American usage :bookworm:

edit: but you're right, I've never heard anybody say "puissant" in English either (lots in French of course...)

I got the impression that the one unintelligent character (drawing a blank here) was the only one who said it, and he was doing so to impress Bex.

I kept reading 'piss ant' :smack:

Thank you, I'll take your good advice. I just checked the copyright date of my nice fat "Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition." 1968.

I agree with your whole "life isn't nice" post, but especially this. I think you've nailed why "Refuge" was so fascinating to me. This hero was real! And all novels and TV before this book aren't.

And your definition of hero is spot on. Am awaiting *your* novel.

Sorry! You know I wasn't trying to be mean, right? I've left plenty of reviews on the "Let's get some action going" thread where I have disliked violent books. I simply prefer not to read such graphic descriptions.

Richard, I plan to get The Tide Mill. Thanks for making it available!

Actually, it is the opposite of pissant.

BOb

DG, you couldn't be mean for the life of you.

The entire story wouldn't have had the impact without the graphic descriptions. It was a post apopolypic tale, after all.

I just wanted to stress......God help us all if/when anything like this ever happens. There will be survivors, good and bad, weak and strong.

Guess what will happen to the good and weak?

They inherit the earth?

BOb

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl: Here's another cup of kool-aid!

This reminds me of one of my favorite movie quotes:

Malcolm: "God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man. Man creates dinosaurs."
Sattler: "Dinosaurs eat man...Woman inherits the earth."

:rofl:

I kept thinking the whole time that the survivors probably had the same thing that people who (theoretically) survived the plague and are immune against HIV. Their cells don't have the receptacles that those kind of viruses enter in.

Woman inherits the earth?

Hey Richard! There's the title for the next book in the series!

Thanks for clarifying about the time frame it was written in :)

I also found an echo of 3 in when he was recovering at the end. I really did thing for a moment that it was either going to be a dying hallucination, or that he was in a mental hospital. Or, of course, possibly both.

I definitely intend to try your other books on the strength of this one.

I too enjoyed the book.

I was initially struck by the similarities with The Stone Arrow. A single survivor living in the wild taking on the village... A completely different time, place and storyline but other then that there were some similarities. :D

I was raised in a pacifist religion so I found the religious commune credible. The contrast between the group that embraced religion after the devastation and the other group that used religious ceremony and rituals to perform the atrocities was interesting. Both forms of control (IMHO).

I liked the characters. The hero wasn't a superman/Rambo character and despite the planning and traps things go wrong.

Huh. I must have no imagination at all. None of the 'intentions' you left open to doubt occured to me at all......I took the book at face value, and never questions Suter's sanity. Living alone for 12 years would make anyone talk to themselves, and act strange around other people as he did.

I don't think most people in countries like USA and England have any clue what real evil is. Kosovo, Rwanda, Columbia, they are just pics on the Tv.

We are so used to the niceties of civilized life, being able to call a cop if we need help, go into a doctors office if we are ill.

No one is going to saw off our heads in front of a camera while we are living to prove a religious point.

No one is going to come thru and massacre our menfolk, murder our babies, and rape the remaining females, ages nothwithstanding.

Not very nice pictures, true, but realistic in parts of the world. And I guess thats what struck me about this book.

Realistic picture of what could be.

Thank you, Mr. Herley. I won't be reading it again, but I won't forget it. :)

I'll comment on the content of the book after I've ruminated a bit more. But I had to comment on the "publishing" history... If your agent didn't send it to Baen, he/she should. I think this book would be right down their alley!

Xenophon

From what I gathered, Suter may have started to go strange after Helen left him and when she died and he thought he was truly alone, that's when he started to talk to himself.

Thanks Richard, for clarifications. I enjoyed this book very much, and it was a fast read, but I did feel like something was missing in the descriptions of the people involved - regarding both their physical and emotional lives. It has been mentioned by others - and I too sometimes had questions about the characters - and wished for a bit more elaboration on the background stories of both the good guy / bad guys - and the neutrals. Your explanations here makes for a real AHA-experience :)

Even though stories of survivors of doomsday is probably not that original, I haven't personally read many of them. And I was intrigued by the way the book made me think "out of the box" by putting me into this age of near future. I especially liked the descriptions of how the wildlife was claiming nature back. The transition of the vegetation and animals into more of a stone age condition "came to life" in a convincing way, and the story brought me into the right state of mind really fast. All in all, a very good read.

I gave up after 2 chapters. :eek:

Nothing wrong with that - not every book is to everyone's taste!

What made you give up on it?

You gave up too soon. The book really takes off in chapter 5.

BOb

I do understand why you gave up, but, the book is a lot better after that. Give it another go.