Muterra Review

MuTerra is a Dystopian novel set in a somewhat futuristic world where the earth was hit by a comet that destroyed virtually all life.  Two groups of people manage to survive the cataclysmic event.  The first group lives underground in a bunker that was built long before the event took place.  The people there are led by a Frank Bishop, later referred to as Director Bishop.  Director Bishop has a vision of what he thinks the world should look like and it using the catastrophe as a reason to make his vision a reality.  Director Bishop has a son named Keith, whom he uses for his own ends.  The man is not the fatherly type.

The second group of people to survive the event were the crews of two submarines.  They set up a camp on shore where they battle radiation and an increasingly hostile world.  They lose over half their numbers but the survivors manage to make a living.

As the story progresses, the people underground ditch the titles they had before they moved there.  Everyone is expected to take their fair share of the work. Money becomes obsolete. People are expected to work, but are not paid in money; instead they receive food, shelter, and an eradication of disease.  Keith and his wife life in this new world.  Keith is given some sort of serum which makes him resistant to the radiation outside while he conducts above ground observations for his father. One day he comes back to discover that his wife stumbled upon a secret: the government had a cure for cancer over fifty years before and Director Bishop knew about it. Soon afterward they are expelled from the underground community. Keith’s wife dies from radiation exposure and Keith moves on stumbling upon the above ground settlement. Along the way he frees a Rock Wolf and befriends it.

Keith befriends the people of this new settlement and realizes that his father will destroy them in order to establish his perfect world. To prevent this, he decides to ensure that those underground stay there. Once he adverts the immediate crises, and Director Bishop gets his just due, Keith decides to move on: a wanderer at heart. 

Like most novels of this genre, it centers o an event that causes society to remake itself into one where there is centralized control and people are just puppets, not free.  Doe the most part, I found the story engaging. However, there were many areas where the story dragged from over explanation.  The author spends most of his time telling the story instead of showing the action. This seems to be a habit among modern writers. This makes those areas a boring read which detracts from the story. But, when he got away from these moments, then the story picked back up.

But otherwise, this is an okay book. It’s not too long of a read, and if you like Dystopian literature, then you might like this.