GRR Reviews Scorch Road (Scorch series) by Toby Neal and Emily Kimelman

Scorch Road has some good adventure elements in it, but it seems the authors managed to leave out some basic fact-checking.

Doctor Elizabeth Johnson needed to ferry the isolated virus of the Scorch Flu from Seattle to Washington DC in order to save milions from a pandemic with 90% fatality rate. On the way, her jet was brought down by a bird-strike and she ended up in the wilderness of Idaho, near "Haven", JT Luciano's prepper camp. JT rescued her, and was convinced of her need to head for DC. He can convince his family in Philadelphia to come along as well. But things never go as planned. On the way to DC, Elizabeth and JT will encounter both humanity at its finest and its worst. But will they realize what they mean to each other?

There are many factual problems with this.

1) CDC HQ is in Atlanta, Georgia. Why would Elizabeth need to go to DC? The request made no sense.

2) Why is flight by C-21 (8 pax VIP jet, basically a Learjet 35) 6 hours when a commercial flight from Tacoma to Washington DC is 4 hours and 30 minutes?

3) Why and how did she carry the knife in her Speedo's? How do you even rip a Speedo by hand?

4) You can't suck (by mouth) fuel from an UNDERGROUND tank!!!!!! It's physically impossible!

I do not wish to nitpick every factual mistake in this book, so I'll just say there are many more factual errors like this. I don't mind the post-apoc setting or the grand conspiracy, and some of the action was not that bad, but these factual mistakes jolted me back out of the story. I want to like this book (and the series) more, but all in all, I can only give this average.

Category: Adventure

Primary Plot: A daughter of senator needs to save millions, and the only one who can help her is a prepper recluse who hated politicians...

Overall Rating: 3/5

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