altlovesbooks
I haven't had a book make me feel more unwelcome to read it since I read Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi. The difference is that I went into Goliath knowing I wasn't the target audience and rated accordingly. For this one, I wasn't quite prepared for the amount of fights this book picked about gender and racial issues, and I had a nagging feeling the entire time that it didn't need to be this way.
I actually really liked this take on a post-apocalyptic society. Rather than the main characters being survivalists, being prepared for everything, being ready to plow through all adversaries in their way, this book focuses on two rather ordinary suburbanites from New Jersey trying to reach their daughter in California. A plague wiped out a large chunk of the world's population, leaving the rest behind immune to the disease. In the wake of the plague, society fractures, narrows in on itself, and the simple act of reaching a loved one across the country becomes incredibly difficult.
Right up front I'll say that I loved the writing in this book. I loved experiencing how a world-ending plague changes your average family's outlook, and how they grapple with old-world morals about stealing and killing and helping fellow survivors. The author did a fantastic job of painting how the world changed for average Americans.
But.....and here's a huge but.....the author really comes out swinging with a myriad of societal hangups they clearly have. The couple featured in this book are biracial, and right out the gate we get a lot of passages about how nearly everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future is the fault of white males in society. Which, fine, we can talk about those issues, I have no problem with it and do see a lot of it in society, but the lengths this author goes to really pin every struggle in this book on that demographic is really quite impressive. We also get an extensive scene in the book where it feels like the fourth wall comes down and the author talks to the reader about legalization of marijuana, living in the present being optimal and 'the future' being a societal concept invented to generate stress, and other airy philosophical topics that don't seem to have a bearing on the book. It really felt shoehorned in. The ending also kind of had some vague (ending spoilers here) ideas about religion being bad and atheism being good, which, while I'm not religious, felt a bit like the author taking the mic again.
Ultimately I gave this book 3 and a half stars, but it fought me the entire way. I wanted so bad to rate it higher given how I enjoyed the premise, but it really felt like the author had a ton of axes to grind in it.
I haven't had a book make me feel more unwelcome to read it since I read Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi. The difference is that I went into Goliath knowing I wasn't the target audience and rated accordingly. For this one, I wasn't quite prepared for the amount of fights this book picked about gender and racial issues, and I had a nagging feeling the entire time that it didn't need to be this way.
I actually really liked this take on a post-apocalyptic society. Rather than the main characters being survivalists, being prepared for everything, being ready to plow through all adversaries in their way, this book focuses on two rather ordinary suburbanites from New Jersey trying to reach their daughter in California. A plague wiped out a large chunk of the world's population, leaving the rest behind immune to the disease. In the wake of the plague, society fractures, narrows in on itself, and the simple act of reaching a loved one across the country becomes incredibly difficult.
Right up front I'll say that I loved the writing in this book. I loved experiencing how a world-ending plague changes your average family's outlook, and how they grapple with old-world morals about stealing and killing and helping fellow survivors. The author did a fantastic job of painting how the world changed for average Americans.
But.....and here's a huge but.....the author really comes out swinging with a myriad of societal hangups they clearly have. The couple featured in this book are biracial, and right out the gate we get a lot of passages about how nearly everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future is the fault of white males in society. Which, fine, we can talk about those issues, I have no problem with it and do see a lot of it in society, but the lengths this author goes to really pin every struggle in this book on that demographic is really quite impressive. We also get an extensive scene in the book where it feels like the fourth wall comes down and the author talks to the reader about legalization of marijuana, living in the present being optimal and 'the future' being a societal concept invented to generate stress, and other airy philosophical topics that don't seem to have a bearing on the book. It really felt shoehorned in. The ending also kind of had some vague (ending spoilers here) ideas about religion being bad and atheism being good, which, while I'm not religious, felt a bit like the author taking the mic again.
Ultimately I gave this book 3 and a half stars, but it fought me the entire way. I wanted so bad to rate it higher given how I enjoyed the premise, but it really felt like the author had a ton of axes to grind in it.