Last Light and Afterlight by Alex Scarrow

Do you know what peak oil is? Me neither - until I read these books by Alex Scarrow. Author of the ubiquitous TimeRider series, in Last Light and its sequel Afterlight, Alex explores the serious question: what happens when the oil runs out?

In true Scarrow style, however, this is not a thesis on consumerism or a dissertation on the technological age. It is a fast-paced, thought-provoking roadmap through suspicion, fear and outright terror as society quickly breaks down.
Using a narrative tool to fast track the denouement of Last Light, Alex Scarrow imagines that all oil production is unexpectedly halted simultaneously around the world. Unlikely, granted; but once you set aside your healthy scepticism and run with it, the implications are shocking. Suddenly armed forces overseas may be stuck there with the enemy because we cannot bring them home; there is no electricity, running water, heating or power in our homes; stores quickly run out of food and water as the supply chain breaks down and hoarding begins (and think how little the UK produces in terms of agriculture etc today...); there is no fuel for private or public transportation so people stuck far from home must take chances and walk; law and order breaks down as the police and other key personnel rush to be with their loved ones. In short, in takes just one week for chaos to reign.

Alex Scarrow

In the midst of this, we follow the members of one family as they struggle survive and find one another in unimaginably difficult circumstances. And then there's the shadowy figures hunting one of them, because she may know who has masterminded the chain of events.

Scarrow, recognising the inherent challenges in moving the story on, deftly avoids them by setting the sequel Afterlight some years later. Not all the family members have survived but those who remain have joined up with other survivors and are now living on a defunct oil rig in the North Sea, isolated, self-sufficient and safe. But just as a mysterious, attractive foreigner shows up in suspicious circumstances, the leader of the group has an accident that renders her too ill to function, leaving a gap that the newest member is only too happy to fill. Meanwhile, some of the young adults in the group are convinced that, somewhere on the mainland, life as they only just remember it must have re-started and three of them set out to find a place where there is electricity, junk food and video games. Instead, they find a world of cannibalism, child soldiers and a ruthless dictator, running out of supplies, intent on invading their oil rig.

Although I feel that Alex Scarrow does chicken out somewhat by relocating the sequel a few years ahead - we never learn how the family met with the others in the group, let alone how they found and colonised an oil rig - I find his explanation (that the novel would be more logistical than narrative) reasonable. What disappointed me more was that we never learn who was behind the halt in oil production, what they hoped to achieve and what happened to them. What I did appreciate, however, was that - unlike some sequential novels - both books were independently outstanding. Reading them both in order obviously improved the reader experience but they could also stand alone.

In addition, the subjects touched on in the novels are not easily forgotten: from our dependence on oil, to whether what we value as a society are the right things, to the resilience of the human condition in the face of adversity and the desire of some elements of society to dominate at the expense of others.

In a sense, these books hold up a mirror to society and shows us the best and the worst of ourselves. Thought-provoking, insightful and well-written, these novels may also be prescient. We just have to hope they are not. For an easy read that intelligently uses a light touch to depict some key topical and eternal questions, you cannot do better than Alex Scarrow's Last Light and Afterlight.

Learn more about Alex Scarrow at http://www.scarrow.co.uk/ or follow him on twitter (@alexscarrow). I read these books on my kobo (www.kobobooks.com)