The Cold Winter

Call to Arms

By: Chris Underwood

Narrated by: Henry Schrader

The Cold Winter: Call to Arms continues where the first book ended, following Central Ohio families through a snowy blackout with ever worsening conditions. The injured main character Thom recovers slowly with the aid of pain medication but also learns the horribly negative side of his little blue pills. Village residents come together as a group to aid travelers in need, at the same time strengthening its borders from attackers.

A Ham Radio operator who is always ‘in the know’ aids the village in their defense preparations and it is learned that he has a secret. A secret that could allow a select few to stop being in Reaction Mode every waking moment. A chance to fight back against the carefully choreographed coup that seems to be occurring. A Call to Arms.

©2019 Chris A Underwood (P)2025 Chris A Underwood

Eh.

In my opinion, this book was not as good as the first one. It does continue the story and picks up immediately where the first book left off.

This book focuses around the main character, Tom, being addicted to opioid pain medication because of his injury. Half of the book is him and his wife arguing. I found this to be extremely boring and aggravating as I have no sympathy for drug addicts. Perhaps the author had an issue with addiction and tried to convey it in the book; I don't know. I just found it extremely annoying, and it seemed to be an attempt to gather sympathy for addicts… Which I have none. This subplot pretty much ruined this book for me.

Additionally, this book delves even deeper into conspiracy theories and it harkens on religion heavily. Those subjects don't usually bother me, but this book was pushing hard.

The authors lack of firearms knowledge is very evident as it was in the last book (bullets "bouncing" off automobile glass... that's not how this works). Also, he has an obvious lack of proper radio etiquette as well. This would be understandable from the civilian characters, but from the characters who are supposed to have prior military service, it's stupid and annoying.

Despite my criticisms, I am enjoying this story overall. I like the positivity of how most of the characters try hard to treat strangers with care, dignity, and respect. I would hope that in a similar real-world catastrophe, people would behave like that. Additionally, as with the first book, this book is speckled with lots of common sense ideas for survival situations that I think most people would not initially think of.

I am looking forward to the third installment to see how the story ends.