Blog Tour Review + Guest Post: The Rule of Three - Eric Walters

Title: The Rule of Three
Author: Eric Walters
Pub Date: January 21st, 2014
Publisher: FSG Books/Penguin
Page Count: 405

One shocking afternoon, computers around the globe shut down in a viral catastrophe. At sixteen-year-old Adam Daley’s high school, the problem first seems to be a typical electrical outage, until students discover that cell phones are down, municipal utilities are failing, and a few computer-free cars like Adam’s are the only vehicles that function. Driving home, Adam encounters a storm tide of anger and fear as the region becomes paralyzed. Soon—as resources dwindle, crises mount, and chaos descends—he will see his suburban neighborhood band together for protection. And Adam will understand that having a police captain for a mother and a retired government spy living next door are not just the facts of his life but the keys to his survival, in The Rule of Three by Eric Walters.

 

The Setting of "The Rule of Three"

I like – whenever possible – to experience the things that my characters are going through.  This has involved walking across the Maasai Mara (Alexandria of Africa), crossing the Sahara Desert on foot (Just Deserts), climbing Kilimanjaro (Between Heaven and Earth) and walking across Kenya (Walking Home).  I sometimes consider myself a ‘method writer’ as I love to get into my characters’ heads by walking in their shoes.  

In creating The Rule of Three I was making a dystopian novel that wasn’t set in some future time or on another planet or place but in the here and now.  I needed a neighborhood that I could experience and where the story was going to take place. It seemed only natural to use the neighborhood I know best – my own.  In fact the house that the characters live in is my house and the old Oldsmobile Omega driven by my main character, Adam, was the first car my son owned – the car he inherited when his grandfather passed away.

I’ve lived in this neighborhood for twenty-five years.  I know the streets, the little creeks, the schools and stores, the places where walls exist – as sound barriers at the highway – as well as I’ve ever known any area in my life.  These are the places where I live, walk, shop, play, visit, and walk my dogs.  I know them the way Adam and his mother and Herb need to know their neighborhood in the story.  This dose of realism means that I if I had to question a logistics question, the where/when/how of the story, all I had to do was go for a walk.   I didn’t have to visualize in my head what I could see with my eyes.

This often meant that I was strolling around the neighborhood -sometimes at two in the morning - walking the routes taken by my characters.  It’s a little bit eerie when you’re out to do a little research, in the dark, the neighborhood silent and asleep, alone, and then you stumble into a raccoon, possum, deer or coyote.  It was often a contest as to which of us would jump higher in startled response.  Apparently me and wild animals are the only living things that seem to be awake and on the streets in the suburbs in the middle of the night.  When I was writing about Erindale Secondary School or the Police Station or the bridge across Burnham (actually Burhamthorpe) I simply went and visited, stood there, made notes, took pictures or sat down with my note pad or computer and began to write.  

I looked at my neighborhood on maps, on Google, and found that my dogs and I were part of street view. If you go street to street in the neighborhood bound by Highway 403, Erin Mills Parkway, Mississauga Road and Burhamthorpe you’ll find me (black baseball cap, red shirt) and my two dogs (one big poodle and one little white poodle) apparently staring at the Google car.

While this level of realism helped to make the story much more realistic it also made the story play in my head in a too real way.  As I said, this story doesn’t take place in some future time or distant place but right now, right here.  What was happening in my story, to my characters, started embedding in my head in such a way that there was a level where real and fiction seemed to blur.  I’d be down by the river and see that it had rained and think ‘that’s great for the crops, we’ll have enough water’.  That was reassuring.  However some things weren’t reassuring.  I found my late night trips often had a level of almost anxiety.  I could picture my ‘enemies’ in the story scaling walls, going in through the gaps, coming along the creek.  I’d wake up, the story in my head, and go downstairs to make sure the front door was locked.  After all, this is the door in my story and there are dangerous, desperate forces out there trying to kill me.  I thought about getting more supplies into the house, how much chlorine did we have for the pool (and for disinfecting water drinking water), and perhaps, most troubling, about getting a gun.  I don’t like guns but suddenly it seemed like a good idea.  For the record, those thoughts passed.

While there is an element of science fiction in this story – the air borne computer virus – the rest is real.  If that one fact took place all of the rest would take place.  This isn’t some wild fantasy but the reality of how people would react, what we would do and need to do to survive.  At the heart of it I guess I got caught up in the central theme of the book – what would you do – what would I do – to survive?

 Keep scrolling for my review!

My Thoughts.

I had my doubts about this novel at first, but as I kept reading, liked it overall.

We open with a teen talking to his best friend in a classroom. Then all the power just...goes out. Then the community of characters have to work together and try to survive.
I was really mellow with the plot. I feel like it could've been more exciting. I understand that it isn't an action movie and that it really isn't like a lot of dystopian. It's "society becoming dystopia," which we don't see has much in books as in movies.  This book takes a more subtle and eloquent approach, rather than the whole "one person has to save the world" idea in movies. I was a little bored with the amount of talking done, but it was an okay story.

The setting. The biggest and main reason I had so much connecting the story, is because this is my town. No joke, The Rule of Three is set in my town. As in, those same streets mentioned in the book are ones I've been down. Because of this, I had an easier time going through the whole "what if this really happened?" idea. Because if it really happened, I would want the same thing Adam got; a community of people working together for their future.

I had absolutely no feels for any of the characters. I blame the writing for this one. Usually, it's the 3rd person speech that gets me, so I'm not even sure why I had trouble with this one. I felt like Adam was boring and Herb was trying too hard. Herb was an ex-spy but something about his actions kept reminding me of that and it just wasn't necessary. The characters just seemed flat to me. Again, they weren't bad, but I was very impartial to their future.

Do you see where this is going? I was really "meh" with everything. It was more if a "I didn't late it, but I didn't love it" scenario. 

Author Info

Eric's Goodreads | Twitter | Website |

Eric was born in Toronto in 1957, which makes him "real old". But, as Eric says, "Just because I have to grow old doesn't mean that I have to grow up!" In his many roles as parent, teacher, social worker, youth sports coach and writer he is in constant contact with children and young adults. He draws from these experiences and feels that this helps him to capture the realistic interaction between young people - the conflicts, tensions, stresses and interests that make up their lives.

Eric began his writing as a teacher. He taught in classes from kindergarten up and his stories often reflect the curriculum that he was teaching. He always read stories - picture books and novels - to his students and this helped him to understand what children liked, responded to, and were inspired by. He enjoys the enthusiasm of his students and often looks at them to provide him with the inspiration to pursue a particular topic in both the classroom and in his writing.

Eric tries to write every day. When he has a story idea he starts with research. This could involve reading books, watching a documentary, or trying to experience the things that his characters are going to go through. This could include rock climbing or riding white water (for STARS), spending time in a wheelchair (Rebound), playing and walking with tigers (Tiger By The Tail), hanging around a tough biker bar (Diamonds in the Rough), standing out in his backyard in a blizzard wearing a T-shirt and shorts (Trapped In Ice), or traveling to Africa (Alexandria of Africa).

"The most important thing anybody ever told me about writing was to write what you know . . . and the only way to get to know things is to do your homework and research before you write," Eric stated.

Once the writing begins the story is always playing around in his head. He takes any opportunity, even if it's just a few minutes between presentations, to put things down, either with pen and paper or on his laptop.

Prior to entering teaching and writing Eric was a social worker (B.S.W., M.S.W., B.A.Hons - specialized major psychology). He worked in a variety of settings including child welfare, private practice, a mental health centre, and, for twenty years on a part-time basis as a Crisis Social Worker in an emergency department. He stopped teaching 4 years ago and left the ER only last year.

The majority of Eric's time is spent in the company of his wife, children and dogs (Lola a big standard poodle and a little white dog named Winnie The Poodle).