Even though this is a sequel, and I haven't read book 1 (it could say somewhere on the book that there is a book 1), it still works. Perhaps it would be easier to keep track of the characters if you've read the first book, I don't know. This is a post-plague, slow kind of story about survival in the North of Russia, where not only the virus that has wiped out most of the country's population can kill you.