Reddit reviews Some Will Not Die

Post-apocalypse is not my thing - so that may color my judgement. I felt a general lack of interest in the characters. There did not seem to be enough of a hook - some reason why I should care/sympathize with these characters. If one does not start with action, then I would like to see some emotional turmoil in it's place. What does this character think, what bothers him, how does he feel? If there is not immediate physical danger, nor emotional pain - to me it just seems like a slow start to the story.

It is generally well written - enough that I would have given it more time to develop if there had been more of it here, but what there was, though not so slow as to put me off, was certainly not enough to get me excited either.

I have some questions regarding the setting. It seems inconsistent to me that there would be a rapid decrease in the population, without a significant destruction of the infrastructure, yet leading to food shortages and lack of government structure at the same time. I would have expected government power to increase, when there is crisis in the society and no great disruption of communication or transport. If this were a biological disaster the phones and cars should have still been working, government should have become more powerful and intrusive, rather than becoming weaker and almost non-existent.

It seemed incongruous to me that there should be electric power and transport and a rapid decrease in the population and yet there are food shortages and government disruption at the same time.

It was also very surprising to me that there would be an extreme shortage of females yet no rise in homosexuality. Historically, in societies that practice female infanticide, also in environments where there are no females, like modern prisons, homosexuality tends to become much more common and open.

You might have sped up the introduction portion of this story with less about the back-story. Not that you do not need to know it (lest you get into huge trouble with your story later) but the reader does not need to know all of that right away. That having been said, there were some parts of the back story that bothered me. If females are a rare and valuable commodity, why did not the neighbors band together to protect this local female? Why did the slavers not just take her if they were able to? Why the delay if they had overwhelming force? Why no resistance if they did not have overwhelming force? Considering that homosexuality should have been common with females being scarce, why was there no issue of the slavers taking the boy as well? The weak, children, boys, would be the most likely to be victimized into replacing females as sexual objects. How then was this boy able to look for his sister with impunity?

Also as we were hearing things from Jack's POV why did we hear from him so much about what the leaders attitude toward members of the group were. I would have preferred to hear Jack's attitude toward them. Jack was a killer, I would have expected a bit more anger/fear in his attitude toward members of his group, and everyone else as well. It might have made for more compelling reading if there was the constant fear/threat of victimization looming over Jack's thoughts.

Also, how is it they have trade - credits, tokens, whatever, if they have no government? What is backing them? You can not eat them - they have no intrinsic value, why are they being accepted as a medium of exchange?

As for the other main character - there was nothing there I could hook on to. Nothing that might help me relate to them. I would have liked some insight into what that character wanted. A bit less of back story, and a bit more about the characters immediate concerns, might have helped me be more interested in them. It is in what motivates them that I may find something to sympathize with.

Generally good, overall, have no problem with the level of writing skill, only with the pace/focus of the story, and what seemed to me to be inconsistencies in the setting.

You might want to read something like Some Will Not Die by Algis Budrys. In his post apocalypse story, many die due to biological agents, enough to cause disruption of the government and civil services like power etc, but those who do survive, band together, effectively becoming local tribes and making war on neighboring tribes for scarce resources. A bit different from your setting, but close enough that reading it might help to focus some of your thoughts regarding your own setting.

Good luck.