Alyse

I think this was written by a 12-year-old kid. The humor is painful. CBS-sitcom level painful. No story need this many disco “jokes”. The dialogue is stilted. The character development is non-existent. The science is interesting, but it's mostly just algebra and unit conversions

This is basically fan-fiction without someone else's interesting characters to fall back on. The dialogue is an experiment in telling an entire story through cliches and quips that would make a CSI writer embarrassed. (Phrases like “Do you need me to draw you a map?” and “Captain Vomit” are said without irony and with the intent of being condescendingly clever.) I hated the characters, they were flat, blatant author avatars and annoyingly immature (I kept forgetting they were supposed to be adults and not 13 years old). There are a few interesting ideas, but they tend to turn into simplistic political soapboxes.

If I had to hear one more time about the chick's messed up eyes or her brother poking things with sticks or all of the ditzy girl's cameras or an in depth description of every blood test they had to take or blatantly obvious or blatantly stupid line of dialogue that a character “deadpanned” or...well, what I'm getting at is that the narration was more than a bit repetitive.

I wanted to like this book, I thought the idea adding politics to the zombie scene could be really interesting. After all, that's what science fiction does best–adds some distance between the subject and the audience so current “hot button” issues can be examined with less bias. But it has to be logical first. I mean, I couldn't get past the whole “We've matured past the death penalty, you'd have to be an idiot to think otherwise.” Yes, the prisoner would reanimate, but he would do so in a controlled environment where he could be immediately dealt with or brought to a research lab. Somehow, in this illogical world, it's more humane to let the prisoner die naturally in jail where he will reanimate and kill fellow prisoners (I'm not inferring this, it is specifically stated). It was only a minor point in the book, but the perfect example for how most of the politics felt–the author had some specific point she wanted to make ahead of time, so she molded her society to justify said point. It wasn't genuine or logical or anything that would have naturally developed out of a zombie infested world.

And I was never sold on the world. I could buy bloggers becoming respected newsmen, if all the bloggers portrayed didn't exemplify every stereotype currently making the blogging community a joke–they were all immature, outspokenly opinionated, and obsessed with fan fiction.

Personally, I like when authors try to use legitimate science to create their worlds–but this felt like she just googled a few things, found some official sounding words, and called it science. I mean, the whole premise is that the common cold (presumably all the millions of constantly changing strains) and cancer (again, all the different and incredibly varied types of cancer)are both magically cured AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT. And, as we all know, scientific progress is scary, so then zombies pop up...or something...I admittedly got a bit lost at that point. I mean, zombie stories don't need an in depth scientific origin story (I don't remember there being one in the Romero movies our heroine can't stop mentioning)–origins help, but if you're going to add one, it had better be believable.

And the “twist ending” is only surprising in that it somehow manages to be both illogical and obvious.

I'm a sucker for a story where the characters don't have names and are only identified by their scientific field of expertise

I love the things Jonathan Lethem can do with words, but sometimes I wish he'd remember to include a plot. Also, the last 200 pages are as horrible as everyone says

[b:The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy 76527 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Laurence Sterne https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403402384s/76527.jpg 2280279] in space. Yet somehow weirder