What if your mobile phone didn’t work?

Or your iPad? Or your pc?

Or the television or radio?

Because there’s no power. No gas. No electricity.

And when you turn on the taps, there’s no water.

And satellites are dropping out of the sky?

That’s the premise of Sam Boush’s frighteningly thought-provoking debut novel All Systems Down, published today by Lakewater Press.

It’s a futuristic thriller set in the wake of a cyber war that has pretty much destroyed Western civilisation.

Chaos

Elite hackers within the North Korean military, have laboured for years to launch Project Sonnimne: a series of deadly viruses set to cripple the Imperialist infrastructures of the US and their European allies.

With one tap of a keyboard, the rewards are immediate. Chaos.

With Russian and Chinese war ships waiting offshore, Brendan Chogan, an out-of-work parking enforcement officer and former boxer, just wants to get his wife and children to safety.

Strangers

But first he needs to get out of the concrete jungle of Portland City.

And then he and his family fall in with a bunch of strangers and the possibility of fighting off the threatened invasion and levelling the playing field becomes a viable option.

Providing they work together.

This is a cracking read and, given the temperaments of some current heads of state, horribly plausible.

Glory

Things fall apart frighteningly quickly and, like Brendan, I found myself trying to figure out where my family might be safe and how my home might become a fortress.

It would have been far too easy for Boush to rout America’s enemies and restore the US to glory.

Instead, he leaves things open-ended and I really want to know what happens next to Brendan and his friends and family.

And fingers crossed the book doesn’t come true.

Review by Sue Featherstone.

Available to buy on Amazon.