The post-apocalyptic USA is a mix of collective farms, trying to revive the corn crops, and a military sponsored by official brands, meaning none other can even be looted. You can easily find a metaphor in the stragglers and their braindead sticking with a part of life that is easily dismissed when there's a proper, newly active world to re-establish. Which all means that we have a fully realised world, and far from just gung-ho activity, we gain insight into the world Whitehead has created for himself.
Yes, but can it be killed, some will ask. One character is likened to a Rachel-from-Friends wannabe - The youngest one wore its hair in a style popularized by a sitcom that took as its subject three roommates of seemingly immiscible temperaments and their attempts to make their fortune in this contusing city. The vocabulary and style are far from mainstream. There are a few instances of killing zombies, as seen from our hero's POV, but beyond that things are much more literary. So don't think this volume is an average zombie actioner. There are a host of relevant flashbacks as we learn what took the character from ambling round several jobs, including being the voice of a coffee franchise on a social network, to discovering the plague's initial outbreak, to surviving this far and entering such a new career. And between looking at the world we're currently in, with all its new terminology that is slowly drip-dripped into our understanding, we have an almighty look at 'Mark Spitz' and his life. The active ones have mostly been gunned down by the military, but there are a few still locked away in hidden corners - as well as inactive ones, called stragglers, who seem stuck in one instant, whether finishing off their last office job for the millionth time, or like a ghost haunting a place relevant to them.Īs usual there's a beat or three as to why we ended up having an inexplicable outbreak of disease turning most of mankind this way - comeuppance for a flatlined culture for one - but on the whole we're looking at the hero, 'Mark Spitz', and co. For we're in a devastated New York, later this century, and our three main protagonists are cleaning up after a worldwide plague of zombies. There are some comments from characters, but they're few and far between - as are those characters that can actually speak. To start, for once, with the book's style - this has probably the least dialogue of any book you'll read this year.
Summary: A very complex world for this novel, considering it concerns a zombie-bashing grunt and his life.
0 kommentar(er)
