Run by Blake Crouch
Run by Blake Crouch
In Run, Blake Crouch attempts to give his readers a zombie apocalypse without the zombies. The result is an exciting ride (or run, as it were) but ultimately his “zombies” don’t hold together as a credible threat and the ending is pure deus ex machina. Let’s take these issue one-by-one.
First, the blurb really sets the scene well. As violence expands like a supernova throughout America, an elderly woman on the radio starts directing people to attack specific individuals including Jack, our hero, a philosophy professor. He barely gets out with his family, and not before his wife’s lover arrives and almost kills them.
This is where the novel began to fall apart for me. This lover is clearly going to reappear but Crouch passes over the problem that such an appearance would normally cause by mentioning that Jack already knew his wife was cheating. I mean, it really is incomprehensible that no mention of this is made at all until the lover reappears at the end of the story.
Moving on, apparently celestial lights in the sky have triggered something in some Americans that have turned them into sadistic homicidal maniacs—maniacs who magically know who else has been affected (they seem to believe they have seen God). Whatever has changed within them drives them to torture and kill everyone else. By the way, Jack’s eight-year-old son has also seen the lights but never turns homicidal.
None of what I’ve just said in the above paragraph makes any sense and none of it is explained. I mean, Jack doesn’t recognize the voice of the old woman who sets the maniacs on him in the first chapters, so how does she even know he hasn’t been changed. The longer this situation continues, the more annoying I found it. But to be fair, what it does do is set the groundwork for a threat far more sinister than mindless zombies. These maniacs (millions of them) coordinate and murder their neighbors, setting up convoys and search parties to find the rest of those who “haven’t seen God”.
Apparently the changes stopped at the northern border of the contiguous 48 states so Jack and his family are trying to reach Canada. (Again—right at the border? It really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.) They have a lot of truly gripping encounters along the way even while Jack’s two children (especially the son) whine and complain and cause trouble. I wish this last part was unrealistic, but it is easy to imagine that spoiled children would not be able to adapt quickly to this new reality. They were annoying but probably realistically portrayed.
Finally, the way the novel ends is pure deus ex machina—as unrealistic as the whole set up, leaving me in the strange place of having enjoyed all of the action but disliked the entire backdrop to the story.
