Helpful Score: 1
Boo. Hiss. I chose this book to read because it was mentioned on the Nook weekly contest that they're running this summer of 2012. I should have known it wasn't worth the $3.99 or whatever I paid for it. I was in the mood to read a compelling, well-written post-apocalyptic story and hoped this would fit the bill. Nope.
The story is at its heart a story written in the first person of a 20-something male protagonist named Jasper who travels around Georgia with a group of his friends that he calls his tribe. That's about the extent of the story. Yes, I was hoping for a plot too. When our story opens, it is approximately 20 years in the future and civilization is starting a slow decline, though that is never really adequately explained, and Jasper is in love with a married woman named Sophia. The first half of the book seems to be about Jasper and company traveling around, meeting new people, traveling some more, and then hooking up with an assortment of women, all while trying to avoid the questionable authority figures and gangsters. The second half of the book appears to try to develop a plot, but it is far too little, too late and I figure more than a few readers will have already been lost to attrition. I only stayed with this book because of a morbid need to know what happened to Jasper, in the same way that you slow down to look at a car-wreck in traffic.
Another critique mentioned that this book appears to try on themes from different books and I wholeheartedly agree. In one segment, it tries to be "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, another takes on a superhero stance and actually references "Batman," while another scene plays with "The Wizard of Oz," and yet another is reminiscent of Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games." There's probably even more references in there that just went over my head, too. I did read that this novel is an expansion of an earlier award-winning short story based on the same characters. I'm sure the short story is great, but as a novel it just doesn't work.
Because I have a degree in creative writing, I feel compelled to point out this book's shortcomings. Firstly, the sentence structure is often awkward, unwieldy or just plain clumsy. Witness this gem: "I wanted to vanish the last bit of distance between us so we could face this together." Also? I could go the rest of my life without reading the lines "I jolted in surprise." It seems to be a favorite sentence of bad authors. Secondly, this book is dying from a lack of almost any sensory detail and the author's near constant glossing over of scene and telling us what happened instead of showing us. He tells us that a character delivers a baby, in just a few lines but never gets into any detail, though we know that Jasper is there front and center. The reader doesn't really know what any of the characters, including Jasper, look like. We don't know what the streets of Savannah look like in this new world. No one knows, or bothers to explain what has caused this apocalyptic collapse of civilization. There are frequent jumps in time, on a chapter basis, that don't make sense and appear to be only for the convenience of the author. Characters come and go also at the convenience of the author despite the fact that the chances of such coincidences occurring are exceedingly rare; yet it happens time and again. Finally, there are hugely gaping plot-holes that defy explanation. In one pivotal scene, several characters run out into a dark forest where they are being chased by the "bad guys," guns are blazing on both sides, and yet no one is hurt or killed, except for the bad guys, of course. Another scene has characters discussing fire, as an element that they haven't actually seen before (huh?) but then just a few pages later, the characters are acting out bits from "The Wizard of Oz." And don't even get me started on how everyone managed to magically survive a wildfire.
Just read this if you have a burning desire to find out about Jasper's life in post-apocalyptic Georgia. Don't read this if you're looking for quality fiction.
The story is at its heart a story written in the first person of a 20-something male protagonist named Jasper who travels around Georgia with a group of his friends that he calls his tribe. That's about the extent of the story. Yes, I was hoping for a plot too. When our story opens, it is approximately 20 years in the future and civilization is starting a slow decline, though that is never really adequately explained, and Jasper is in love with a married woman named Sophia. The first half of the book seems to be about Jasper and company traveling around, meeting new people, traveling some more, and then hooking up with an assortment of women, all while trying to avoid the questionable authority figures and gangsters. The second half of the book appears to try to develop a plot, but it is far too little, too late and I figure more than a few readers will have already been lost to attrition. I only stayed with this book because of a morbid need to know what happened to Jasper, in the same way that you slow down to look at a car-wreck in traffic.
Another critique mentioned that this book appears to try on themes from different books and I wholeheartedly agree. In one segment, it tries to be "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, another takes on a superhero stance and actually references "Batman," while another scene plays with "The Wizard of Oz," and yet another is reminiscent of Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games." There's probably even more references in there that just went over my head, too. I did read that this novel is an expansion of an earlier award-winning short story based on the same characters. I'm sure the short story is great, but as a novel it just doesn't work.
Because I have a degree in creative writing, I feel compelled to point out this book's shortcomings. Firstly, the sentence structure is often awkward, unwieldy or just plain clumsy. Witness this gem: "I wanted to vanish the last bit of distance between us so we could face this together." Also? I could go the rest of my life without reading the lines "I jolted in surprise." It seems to be a favorite sentence of bad authors. Secondly, this book is dying from a lack of almost any sensory detail and the author's near constant glossing over of scene and telling us what happened instead of showing us. He tells us that a character delivers a baby, in just a few lines but never gets into any detail, though we know that Jasper is there front and center. The reader doesn't really know what any of the characters, including Jasper, look like. We don't know what the streets of Savannah look like in this new world. No one knows, or bothers to explain what has caused this apocalyptic collapse of civilization. There are frequent jumps in time, on a chapter basis, that don't make sense and appear to be only for the convenience of the author. Characters come and go also at the convenience of the author despite the fact that the chances of such coincidences occurring are exceedingly rare; yet it happens time and again. Finally, there are hugely gaping plot-holes that defy explanation. In one pivotal scene, several characters run out into a dark forest where they are being chased by the "bad guys," guns are blazing on both sides, and yet no one is hurt or killed, except for the bad guys, of course. Another scene has characters discussing fire, as an element that they haven't actually seen before (huh?) but then just a few pages later, the characters are acting out bits from "The Wizard of Oz." And don't even get me started on how everyone managed to magically survive a wildfire.
Just read this if you have a burning desire to find out about Jasper's life in post-apocalyptic Georgia. Don't read this if you're looking for quality fiction.
