Emergence, David R. Palmer

This book kept me up until after seven Monday morning, but I read some of it while not entirely exhausted, and therefore I can feel safe in saying that I really, really liked this book.

Candy is a gifted kid who seems to survive the apocalypse completely by chance--she really wants to read the stuff in her dad's tricked out shelter and happens to be in there when the shit goes down. But as time goes on, it turns out there is way more than that.

Since Candy is an extraordinary kid, this makes a much more thrilling story than if it was about me surviving nuclear war. Story would probably be about fat crippled woman going crazy from loneliness and grief.

Main problem had with novel is narrative voice penetrated sleep-starved psyche and can't tell when will stop thinking, writing in sentences like this.