The end of the world as we know it starts with the death of a pheasant. Ross MacLeod and his family enjoy their annual holiday trip to Scotland, not realizing that the hunting death of the pheasant is about to trigger a cataclysmic plague that will destroy most of the earth's inhabitants. The infrastructure of the world is in chaos as the basic systems are failing and various groups of people are banding together to survive. In this new void, magic is emerging. Who will live and who will survive as the plague, called Doom, overtakes the world?

Wow! Nora Roberts has long been a favorite author of mine (particularly under her J.D. Robb pseudonym) but YEAR ONE just blows me away! Divided into four parts, YEAR ONE takes readers through the first days of the plague in Doom as we begin to see who our main characters will be in this nightmarish and all too realistic scenario. The next three sections, Escape, Survival, and Dark to Light, take readers on a journey where magic is beginning to divide the remaining population into segments of good and evil.

The first section, Doom, may be one of the best written apocalyptic scenarios I have ever read. The circumstances Nora Roberts describes are are frightening in their intensity, even more so because of how plausible the scenario is. It's rare that a book haunts me for so long, but YEAR ONE is the kind of story that stays with you well past the last page being turned.

I don't want to give away any spoilers by focusing too much on any particular characters, but Nora Roberts ensures that the reader is drawn into the various lives of the characters. We love, we cheer, and yes, we fear for the very survival of the various characters Nora Roberts introduces to us. My favorite character to this point in the trilogy is Arlys Reid for her steadfast determination to provide the public with news and information in a suddenly scary and everchanging world.

Nora Roberts is best known for her romances and her J. D. Robb police procedurals, but YEAR ONE is a startling and intriguing new direction for her writing. Nora Roberts has taken my emotions and wrenched them in so many different directions- and this is only after the first book in the trilogy! I can't wait to see where Nora Roberts takes us in this new and fascinating world. Without a doubt, YEAR ONE is the best book I've read this year (and I've read a lot of books). If you read just one book this year, make it YEAR ONE.

Book Summary

A stunning new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author—an epic of hope and horror, chaos and magic, and a journey that will unite a desperate group of people to fight the battle of their lives…

It began on New Year’s Eve.

The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed—and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.

Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river—or in the ones you know and love the most.

As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.

In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.

The end has come. The beginning comes next.