I don’t do many reviews here. So if I take the time to review a product, it means something – either that the product is particularly good, or there was something about the product I needed to rant about. In any case, if I review it, it’s stood out to me pretty significantly. In this case, I am reviewing something that I believe is exceptional in several ways.

The book is called Noise. You can check out the promo site Salvage Country and learn all about author Darin Bradley (Twitter )

Here’s the short synopsis (spoiler free, as is the rest of the review) : the book follows a small group of characters as they navigate societal collapse in modern America. And when I say societal collapse, we’re talking about events that trigger violence, rioting and looting on a scale that destabilize the nation entirely – a complete breakdown of social order that necessitates violent acts to ensure ones own survival. The characters in the book are right in the thick of it, and you’re right in the thick of the characters as they deal with their own survival, as everything is in the act of coming completely unglued. The events in the book cover only a few days at most.

That all may or may not be your cup of tea. But you should read this book anyway, for several reasons. Here are a few.

Let’s start with the easiest : It’s good. It’s really good. It’s well written, takes chances, and has a lot of little touches that really stand out. There are moments in the book where the author does more with a single well chosen word than could be done with paragraphs of narrative. I suspect these instances reflect places where the author took great care in choosing his words, because it’s too difficult to believe he lucked into them repeatedly.

That’s enough of a reason by itself to read Noise. Are you looking for a good book to read? This one was exceptional. But there’s more.

The author has tapped into something here that is worth looking at, and he’s done so very well. For the last few years, there has been an increasing din in the background within certain (perhaps all) circles of American culture. I’d like to say the din is about self-sufficiency in the face of chaos, but it’s probably more accurate to say it’s Fear Of Collapse. This is not a new topic, by any stretch. People were putting bomb shelters in their backyards in the 50s and 60s, afraid of collapse caused by The Bomb. In the 80s we were convinced that the Russians were just around the corner, and that collapse would be imminent. In the 90s, compounds were all the rage. And let’s not get started with what’s been going on the last 9 years or so. Fear of Collapse is something that comes back in vogue every few years. But what’s been captured in Noise is something that runs deeper, and I’m having trouble putting my finger on it.

We’ve become increasingly interested in being more self-sufficient, both at the national level and individually. Growing our own food. Raising our own chickens. Micro-manufacturing and the Maker movement. The amount of thought people put in to their Zombie Apocalypse plans. All of these things I believe tap into a pulse, the general worry in our culture that we have become too dependent on the infrastructure around us, and less able to take care of our selves. Noise taps into this same pulse, and expresses itself in that context in ways for which I was unprepared, even knowing what I knew about the book going in.

There is also a lot to get from the book as a game designer or game enthusiast. It’s impossible to miss how playing RPGs affected the author’s voice when writing Noise. There are a number of overt DnD references that anyone who has played RPGs will understand. But there’s more than just a couple inside references to be taken from Noise. There is an overall grittiness and tone to the book that I think would be tremendously useful to any GM if they read the book and take certain lessons to heart. Primary amongst these lessons is that violence and violent acts have an effect on everyday people. Too often in our games, both as players and as GMs, people get away with unspeakably violent acts with minimal blowback to their person. And that’s just not realistic. Sure, our games are a place of fantasy, a place where we sometimes go with the intention of escaping harsh realities. The characters in Noise suffer. Less, certainly, than would a normal person in the same circumstances. But more than characters typically do, in books or in games. But the suffering of the characters adds a great deal of depth to Noise that would otherwise be absent. Without the suffering, the story would ring terribly hollow. By embracing this same suffering during the creation and evolution of characters, NPCs and scenarios, I believe GMs and players alike could add depth and tone to their stories that would otherwise be absent.

I could go on at length about Noise, but it would be difficult to go much further without adding spoilers – spoilers that you don’t need. Nobody reads books because they know if the heroes live or die or because they know it has a happy or a sad ending. We read books because someone says, in one way or another, “This is a good book. You should read it.”

Noise is a good book. You should read it.