I just finished The Postman, the one the Kevin Costner movie from 1997 is based on.
Gotta be honest, disappointed with it. Might be one of the rare times a Hollywood movie is superior to the book it is based on. (As a side note, the movie is plenty good and I find the critical backlash to it puzzling. Yet more proof film critics tend to be joyless fuckwads)
The book has a strong start and setting. The first 1/5th of it goes by without any real issues. The writer made a believable post-apocalypse and the setting is vague but enough detail is given to form a picture of how it happened and why things are the way it are. But then things go downhill.
The Cyclops plotline was interesting, seeing as the movie didn't have it. I can see however why Costner dropped it as it didn't really match well with the post apocalypse and in a movie format wouldn't work well. But it feels underexplored and explained. We are also introduced to Dana, the main protagonist love interest who is a feminist with some weird but interesting takes on the pre-Apocalypse from her post-Apocalypse education and life (she thinks men cause it because women failed to properly raise and vet them for society). I would have a problem with this but it isn't developed enough for me to actually get a good grasp on the thing.
The actual "Postman" scenes then sorta disappear as the MC moves to try and stop the bandit horde that is gonna come and destroy his little slice of Oregon that is rebuilding. This opens another issue, as the entire dynamic of him working to establish a postal service and the bluffs gets sidetracked. They find a guy who runs a community who once stopped the bandits, but he doesn't wanna join up because he likes his home and won't leave.
And this is where the book kinda lost me, as the bandits capture the MC and part of his party and try and make them join their Survivalist army. There is some exposition and such but the fact is that by this point it is clear the book is going too fast plotwise while being a bit too weak lore wise compared to the start. We get some background on Nathan Holn who gets blamed with causing the collapse of the USA and again, it feels rushed and badly explained and somewhat reminds me of political strawmanning. The slow but steady construction of the setting is gone, and things quickly escalate towards a final fight that feels less rewarding and interesting than the one in the movie. Also another sci-fi aspect is added in the form of augments which were a thing pre-war and how they survived which feels out of place.
A entire story arc of the love interest happens off-screen and we are literally told about it in a exposition dump by her. It feels like a important piece of the setting and the feminist message which is just tacked on as if the writer forgot about it and decided to rush to make sure it got in. Again, it feels underdeveloped and I can't even criticise it properly because it doesn't feel done.
A real shame. We could have had a really cosy book about rebuilding after the fall but we got a messy mash of plots.
