There's a story to this one. For many years, I've had the faintest of memories of having read a book - or perhaps it was books - when I was younger, probably late primary school, maybe early high. I remember them from my local library - the Pines - and they were in the young adult section; all I could remember is that they were set in a post-apocalyptic America whose inhabitants had lost the use of technology following some great disaster (presumably nuclear), many years on, that one of them had a cover with a giant ship on it, and that the title had something to do with a wall. Also, the book, or books, or perhaps it was just the cover(s), made enough of an impression on me that I wanted to re-read them.
I think they probably slipped my mind for quite a while after whenever it was that I was exposed to them, probably resurfacing at some point in uni, maybe mid-uni. Thing was, though, no matter how many people I talked to, and even with the bottomless reservoir of information that is the internet, I couldn't find the name of the book/s - what little I remembered just wasn't enough to be able to track them down. So I'd more or less resigned myself to never being able to revisit them and find out what it was that made them linger, albeit in such a trace kind of way, in the first place.
Then, a few months ago, what in retrospect should've been obvious: going to the wikipedia list page for 'fantasy novels' (or somesuch similar) and ctrl+f-ing for "wall" - and voila, 'The Breaking of Northwall' by Paul O Williams. And after all that, it turns out to be only alright, not bad but not captivating either, at least now; I can't remember whether I read this one (I did find the cover image that I'd remembered - book 4 in the series), but in any event don't remember its events at all, and while the story is decent enough, the characters, of whom there are far too many, are on the thin side, and the way that all the different tribes (warring remnants of the country's former population, with no recollection of the time before the 'great fire' whose existence folklore has passed down to them) come to work together is a bit bland. (It's also worth noting that it's quite rigorously 'realistic' - no orcs, dragons or even mutants of any kind here.)
Possibly this is one of those series that takes a while to gather momentum - first books are often fantasy series' weakest, at least unless they go on for too long and bloat at the end - or maybe it was just the concept that captured my imagination enough for it to linger down the years, as whichever one/s I read were probably the first I'd come across to be set in this kind of post-apocalyptic setting - that is, one in which memory of the times before has been lost, while the world's reduced inhabitants make their way surrounded by the mysterious remnants of those former times, Ozymandias writ large; both the imagery and the ideas itself would have struck me strongly, I suspect, such that even if the execution and writing are merely serviceable, some kind of fascination would have arisen. I don't know if I'll read the rest - probably, at some point, maybe.
I think they probably slipped my mind for quite a while after whenever it was that I was exposed to them, probably resurfacing at some point in uni, maybe mid-uni. Thing was, though, no matter how many people I talked to, and even with the bottomless reservoir of information that is the internet, I couldn't find the name of the book/s - what little I remembered just wasn't enough to be able to track them down. So I'd more or less resigned myself to never being able to revisit them and find out what it was that made them linger, albeit in such a trace kind of way, in the first place.
Then, a few months ago, what in retrospect should've been obvious: going to the wikipedia list page for 'fantasy novels' (or somesuch similar) and ctrl+f-ing for "wall" - and voila, 'The Breaking of Northwall' by Paul O Williams. And after all that, it turns out to be only alright, not bad but not captivating either, at least now; I can't remember whether I read this one (I did find the cover image that I'd remembered - book 4 in the series), but in any event don't remember its events at all, and while the story is decent enough, the characters, of whom there are far too many, are on the thin side, and the way that all the different tribes (warring remnants of the country's former population, with no recollection of the time before the 'great fire' whose existence folklore has passed down to them) come to work together is a bit bland. (It's also worth noting that it's quite rigorously 'realistic' - no orcs, dragons or even mutants of any kind here.)
Possibly this is one of those series that takes a while to gather momentum - first books are often fantasy series' weakest, at least unless they go on for too long and bloat at the end - or maybe it was just the concept that captured my imagination enough for it to linger down the years, as whichever one/s I read were probably the first I'd come across to be set in this kind of post-apocalyptic setting - that is, one in which memory of the times before has been lost, while the world's reduced inhabitants make their way surrounded by the mysterious remnants of those former times, Ozymandias writ large; both the imagery and the ideas itself would have struck me strongly, I suspect, such that even if the execution and writing are merely serviceable, some kind of fascination would have arisen. I don't know if I'll read the rest - probably, at some point, maybe.
