Flora & Jim – BP Gregory
Reviewed by Steve Stred
The world is frozen.
The animals ascendant.
And, locked in desperate pursuit of “the other father” across a grim icy apocalypse, Jim will do anything to keep his daughter alive.
“I wanted to smash fear’s spine with my boot.”
If you’ve spent any amount of time reading through any of my reviews or even seeing my tweets on Twitter about what books I’ve snagged, you’ll frequently see me say that I like to buy, read and review books from the folks who interact with me a bunch and who have supported me through likes, shares/retweets, buying my books or just being supportive. It doesn’t create any sort of preconceived bias going into reading, I just know how tough it can be to get your book seen when so many great books keep coming out.
Flora & Jim is one such book that I needed to snag. BP has always been fantastic and very engaging on the various platforms and when I saw the synopsis to this one I was hooked. While I am typically a bit jaded or uninterested about a lot of post-apocalyptic stories, one such plot point I’ll never lose interest in is the ‘earth is now frozen’ narrative.
I was intrigued between the tension-filled relationship between Flora & Jim and it worked well that the story starts off by us being thrown into the middle of the action. The world is ice now, completely frozen over and society as we know it has disintegrated.
Gregory picks up with the father/daughter duo in pursuit of a man and boy. They want their supplies and in the new world the pecking order has returned to survival of the fittest.
I felt this rolled out similar to McCarthy’s “The Road.” The father here was fighting an internal battle between what he’d done in the past versus what needs to be done to survive.
Gregory decides to add an entire mix of creepy-crawlies into the mix as well, which was absolutely unsettling. Whenever the two get a fire going, they, and we the readers, have no idea what will be defrosted and come alive, squirming forth from the permafrost.
The ending was the icing on the cake (had to say it!) and I thought was a great wrap up to the tale.
I’ll definitely be checking out more from Gregory, but if you are looking for a starting point, I think this would be an ideal spot.
Flora & Jim
The world is frozen.
The animals ascendant.
And, locked in desperate pursuit of “the other father” across a grim icy apocalypse, Jim will do anything to keep his daughter alive.
You can buy Flora & Jim from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Steve Stred
Steve Stred writes dark, bleak horror fiction.
Steve is the author of the novels Invisible & The Stranger, the novellas The Girl Who Hid in the Trees, Wagon Buddy, Yuri and Jane: the 816 Chronicles and two collections of short stories; Frostbitten: 12 Hymns of Misery and Left Hand Path: 13 More Tales of Black Magick, and the dark poetry collection Dim the Sun.
On September 1st, 2019 his second collection of dark poetry and drabbles called The Night Crawls In will arrive. This release was specifically created to help fund the 1st Annual LOHF Writers Grant.
Steve is also a voracious reader, reviewing everything he reads and submitting the majority of his reviews to be featured on Kendall Reviews.
Steve Stred is based in Edmonton, AB, Canada and lives with his wife, his son and their dog OJ.
You can follow Steve on Twitter @stevestred
You can visit Steve’s Official website here
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