William and Christina are real characters in a viable WTSHTF scenario. A great adult story with no ZOMBIES but more a study in just how close we are to folding it up as a society. Great read

Fredrik T Olsson presents a novel based upon the next stage of enemies of the human race. This is AI (Artificial Intelligence) the existence of foes that started out by being made by mankind, evolved their own persona and began attacking their creators believing that humans were their own worse enemies.

The events begin in Stockholm, Sweden just prior to Christmas with a sudden citywide blackout: Television, radio, phones, Internet and all electric lights wink out throwing the area into chaos. In the city room of a silenced major newspaper Christina Sandberg tries to piece together the reason for the blackout and has the eerie feeling that her ex- husband William is somehow involved. On his part William who is a cyber security expert and professional code breaker had received an e-mail just prior to the blackout occurring with very specific instructions to be followed. The military police, aware of this correspondence take him into custody before he can act on the contents of the email.​

We follow William, as he becomes free and begins tracking the blackout, and subsequent attacks on many nuclear plants around the world trying to find the cause of these disruptions and take action to thwart them.
Explanations of what is going on are well delineated by the author and while the novel could be categorized as Science Fiction current events and discoveries do make it a near term possibility. Why is William thought of by authorities as the cause of the attacks and sought by police and military is a fair question to broach. Will he be able to determine what is happening, why, and fix the problem? Mr Olsson is very conversant about the area he postulates and immediately grabs the reader's attention supplying clues and bringing his audience to accepting the events of a very engrossing novel with central characters acting as they certainly would under the circumstances. Be prepared for some missed sleep when reading the book.

Very similar in plot line to another book I read recently so could not finish it.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley

This is more of a guy book.

This does not mean it is a bad book. It’s just more male oriented than female.

William Sandberg has a few problems, the least of which is the fact that he has lost his job. The most pressuring is that the lights have gone out in Stockholm and no one knows why. This also concerns his wife Christina Sandberg and his daughter, Sara. Yet, the book focuses greatly on William’s reactions to certain things, and there are a few places where Christina’s reactions would also be called for.

But no one is really talking to each other because of family drama. You know how it is. But Olsson makes the family drama believable so it does work.

The family must solve an international conspiracy and save Stockholm from a black out where nothing works. (Though I was wondering about back up generators, nothing is said about hospitals for instance).

The best parts of the book are the descriptions of a powerless Stockholm during nighttime. Quite honesty, the power that Olsson has in describing the various reactions and dangers when the lights go out. The family drama is less interesting. In part this is because Sara serves as little more than a plot point, a push as it were.

Yet, both William and Christina are real characters, and while William and his reactions take center stage (to be fair, it his series), Christina is not a maiden in distress. It would make a good movie and is a good thrilling read.

This book begins with a blackout over Stockholm, where everything goes dark, not just the lights, but the phones, the internet – basically everything that connects the city to the rest of the world. A young woman with information about the blackout is murdered as she tries to give her father information that would reverse the outage. Enter journalist Christina Sandberg, who has a feeling her ex, William is somehow involved in the whole thing. William, a cyber security expert, is indeed involved, as a matter of fact he’s in the whole mess up to his neck, trying to find his missing daughter and to save the country in one fell swoop. There’s enough code breaking, big government secret stuff in here to please fans of Dan Brown and Steve Berry