All That Remains by Al Barrera

All That Remains by Al Barrera

Published by Al Barrera on September 15 2015

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction, Dystopian

Pages 353

The old world is dead, and humanity struggles to survive in the shadows of the new one. Kyle, Sara, and Tim are scavengers, hiding in the remains of human civilization from the hungry things that destroyed it. Living on the few items that haven’t rotted in the thirteen years since civilization was wiped out.

But something has shown itself: A terrible creature that betrays an intelligence in the madness of the beings that rule the planet.

When the group finds Kaylee, a little girl who claims to know of a safe haven somewhere in Tennessee, they embark on a desperate journey to find it. Memory and loss, depravity and salvation— their last run will put them face to face with horrors of both man and monsters the likes of which they’ve never seen.

“If they made it back. Always if.”

Covers can make or break books for some people. A lousy cover can mean some readers decide to never look twice, we have all been there. That being said, I have hardly ever picked up a book quite as fast as I did with this novel. The cover alone screams, darkness, fragility and a loss of innocence

and brings the images of monsters to mind. I began reading with fairly high hopes for Al Barrera’s book. A critical thing I realized while reading was the set up of the work.While written in third person, the chapters of the work alternate between focus characters (namely Kyle and Sarah) and offer full insight to thoughts and actions. We are first met with Kyle, Sarah, and Tim.

Kyle is a reluctant, slightly older leader. A survivor who has lost many people and no longer wishes to experience any losses, he is cynical, grim, short tempered and often overcome with memories. With a standoffish personality, I found myself wishing Kyle would just die. This is funny in hindsight, but frustrating when reading. While his interrupting memories and flashbacks were key to his past they were written in a jarring fashion, imitating how memories can actually overcome someone, but this made the work incredibly hard to read when scenes rapidly change with no warning every few paragraphs. 

An incredibly flat character most of the time was the younger male, Tim. We are led to believe Tim is whiny and immature, just barely past the stage of teenager, and at first there is actually not much to know about him until more than halfway through the novel we discover a small part of his past. Often he serves as a tool to anger Kyle repeatedly and they continuously clash. Their relationship appeared similar to a father and son going head to head before eventually coming to understand one another or a situation in which an aged leader is losing his power and a younger, potentially stronger leader prepares to replace him. However, more often than not, it just looked like two men clashing over egos and age and it quickly grew stale and stereotypical. In the midst of their testosterone was a voice of reason keeping both men in check when conflicts arose: Sarah.

Sarah is the only adult female character, not to mention an LGBTQ+ character. She is also a “scanner,” someone who feels energies and memories like imprints left on belongings and in buildings, scraps of the past, however she can also utilize this talent to locate things in the present or raid the memories of the living. I loved the idea of these abilities, but the details are slow going for a large chunk of the novel and I felt somewhat underwhelmed. We never experience the potency of these skills until almost two thirds of the way through the novel, though they are used occasionally to gather information from Kaylee.

Kaylee is the young girl who is found on a scavenging trip. She is alone and crying, having survived a massacre. She serves as a catalyst for the plot, but also a tool to find information needed for the end goal. I felt without Kaylee the novel would never proceed because there would be nothing but three people wandering in a wasteland and arguing amongst themselves.

“They walked through the wreckage of the subdivision, three more ghosts in a sea of them.”

Atmosphere and setting are immediately introduced and with very little dialogue, only internal monologues, the reader discovers just how much life has changed and how dire the situation is. The world has become but the bones of what it once was, buildings destroyed and nature overcome by  and unknown entity called “the blight” while monsters roam freely and humans have become the prey. Vague references of what happened to the world appear throughout the work, brought forth by the thoughts of Sarah and Kyle, but there is almost nothing one would call an origin story of the destruction. Barrera presents us with nothing but wreckage and aftermath which we are supposed to swallow without question; while this may be representative of the title and the new truth the characters have come to know: there is no need to look back at what happened, all that remains is what you must face, I found this to be incredibly frustrating. As an avid fantasy and sci-fi reader I love for a world to be created in entirety for me to grasp onto and fall into a story. All That Remains leave many unanswered questions and with a slow plot my mind continuously drifted to what I wished was being discussed rather than what was actually written on the page.

Despite a fairly well created world, the plot and characters were lacking. Many scenes reminded me of zombie fiction I have encountered before. From some locations, goals, and character types there were concepts that have occurred before. There was little development for most of the story, and what few strong characters existed were underutilized; it felt poorly executed and as though only some parts of the story received the author’s full attention. While Barrera writes action well, there was little focus on building anticipation, rather the reader is thrown into immediate anxiety and heightened emotion haphazardly and randomly. The last third of the book held a majority of action, changing environments and a sense of conflict that made it highly enjoyable. However, my enjoyment was dampened by scenes featuring men attacking Sarah. The scenes consisted of incredibly sexist and vile language and incredible violence, something that I did not deem needed to create a potentially incredible moment of psychological thrills and terror. It reminded me of low level exploitation horror movies and I debated multiple times if this book was worth finishing because of how much it detracted from the reading experience.

Overall, I would give this book is 2 stars. 1 star for the created world, overrun and wild with perils and action and 1 star for Sarah, the most interesting character with incredible abilities and untapped strength. I am left thinking this book is what comes from throwing I Am Legend and The Walking Dead into a mixing pot before adding a dash of psychic alien creatures with vampire-like silver allergies. The concept holds promise but is too much to execute in one book. So many things occurred in the work that none of them felt fully described and scenes lacked the elaboration I love in sci-fi and fantasy fiction. Despite this, by the end of the novel we are left with a concrete future conflict and I believe a sequel could be much better, especially if it focuses on Sarah because there is much potential for an amazing and immersive experience.