Dead of Night (Aftershock #1) by Carlyle Labuschagne

🌟🌟🌗 out of 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

 

Synopsis:

In a dark and desolated After Earth, love still does exist, but the cost of bearing such a flaw is death.
World War III has left Earth in utter turmoil. People’s beliefs are said to be the cause of the worldwide destruction. After The Clearing new laws are set about - to show certitude in anything besides the law is weak and chargeable as mutiny. To be illogical and have faith in religion is illegal, to be limitless is dangerous. And Illness is seen as a defect – all flaws that are inexcusable.
But to love is the greatest betrayal of all man kind. It is a fault the world has long forgotten and punishable by death, a fatal risk Aecker and Opel are fully prepared to take - because in love there is freedom. But how far can they push back before it claims their lives and of those they care about?

^{*I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*}

I bounced between 2.5 and 3 stars for this book but ultimately went with the lower rating because I needed more from this book. There were a lot of good ideas behind it but they could have been executed better. I kept thinking that I had accidentally skipped the first book and was somehow reading the sequel. I actually double and triple checked that this was the first book in the series. The author immediately throws the reader into the thick of things which would be fine if there was more explanations about things. The world building was just okay for me. I wanted to be able to understand who the warring parties were and more about the technology of the time. The environment itself is never explained either and seemed as if it should have been discarded and added to a different story. There were some kind of dust storms and acid rain but the reader is never told why those things were taking place.
There is never any kind of background given to any of the characters which is probably why I had no idea why they were doing the things that they were doing. All I know about Aecker is that his parents are dead and that the people around him see him as a nerd who is not as manly as the other men.