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Devolution
Abandonment, addiction, AIDS, alcoholism, angels, beer, blood, bourbon, burlap, butane, candles, cocktails, death, deception, devolution, drugs, earwigs, evolution, fear, floods, Gatorade, germophobia, Goldfish crackers, hairspray, handguns, health insurance, heaven, hell, heresy, heroin, homophobia, hypodermics, juvenile delinquency, life, manufactured consent, media blockades, Messiah Complex, nightmares, oblivion, painkillers, paranoia, prayer, prescriptions, quarantine, racism, railroad spikes, razors, rebirth, repentance, retribution, revolution, revolvers, rifles, sacrifice, sex, shotguns, sin, sores, soup, suicide, teen angst, violence, vodka, vomit, weight loss, and zombies.
251 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 2007
4 people want to read
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November 5, 2010
I am not sure how to proceed with this review. I figure that someone will read it and perhaps take my analysis as some sort of judgement on my part on whether or not they should read this book. Usually a review is meant to do that but here I think it is best to just say this is my personal viewpoint based on my own experiences and perceptions of life--your experience may vary. The other reviews have chosen to take a look at this book in very top down approach, not going over the details of the story but taking it as a profound revelation about our society. I will go about my review in a different way. I will state as I am writing this sentence I still have not the foggiest idea of what amount of stars to give this work but by the time I complete this review I will have made some sort of decision.
First off I looked at the information at the front of the book and there was a line from the publisher indicating that at the author's request they did no editing at all. When I saw that I cringed, knowing full well that most self published authors that refuse editing help usually end up with a stream of conciousness writing style that has a great many spelling and contextual errors. Fortunately with this work, the errors were limited. Joseph Bertalmio appears to be a very capable writer who did a good job with the mechanics of writing this story. I did not see any other works by him on Amazon and there was no blurb about him in the book, just the picture on the back, which leads me to believe that he is about the age of the characters in his story--college age or thereabouts and that perhaps this is his first novel. Given what I think is his age explains a good deal about how he went about writing this story.
A brief synopsis of the book is that we are introduced to Taylor Donner, a college student who is forced to face up to the fact that he is deathly ill, which unfortunately coincides with the dead rising from the grave. He is battling with the memories of a horrible suicide of one friend and the horrible circumstances surrounding another friend's situation (I am trying to avoid giving away key details of the story) as the world around him unravels. Meanwhile, Airforce Second Lieutenant Leon Gibbs has been assigned the unenviable task of setting up a blockade around the midwestern college town where the zombie outbreak has occurred. He is not allowed to let anyone out and he is forced to deal with Special Forces, which has swept through, moving into the town to start handling the destruction.
The story follows Taylor's exploits, mostly inside the town, and Leon's which are mostly at the edge of town, and the horrible challenges each of them have to cope with in the face of something so unspeakable.
The story flows smoothly and I can see in the author a good storyteller. He knows how to write, that is for sure. But, and the BUTS are sizeable for me, he deals in a lot of broad generalizations that bothered me. Certainly, I am sure they were meant to bug me, because without a doubt this is a "message" book meant to give the reader a fairly clear idea of what the author feels about all those topics he brings up on the back cover, some of which are: AIDS, handguns, racism, and numerous others not mentioned there including the military, the midwest, college students, locals who live in college towns, small towns, prejudice...the list goes on.
Did he do a good job getting his point across? Yes, if you can stomach some of the stereotypes. The author makes generalized accusations and indictments that go with the territory: the military and the overlords above it are all evil, a black man in the military is typically treated like a dog, gun ownership is innate evil and the cause of many of our woes as a society, midwesterners are racist homophobic Christian Conservatives...the list goes on.
Are his points good ones? Get past the accusations about so many different people and groups posited here and you can see an author working to tackle some of the major issues of our time. He used the guise of a horror novel to do it, which perhaps is meant to camoflage it a bit but everything jumps out at you, spelling out his intentions loud and clear. It feels like he is preaching to the choir, as it were. Those that agree with his views and sentiments will nod their heads yes while those who feel differently, or that his perspective is somewhat narrow will not be impressed with the message here.
As a zombie story, it is decent. I think the author has great potential in this genre or any other he chooses to delve into. Perhaps I did not appreciate everything about it but that is not to say that I do not recommend that someone take this work out for a test drive to judge for themselves. I like the fact that this author has put in a tremendous effort to make his story meaningful, I just believe he pushed too hard, as if he were beating me over the head with an mallet over and over again to get his point across.
First off I looked at the information at the front of the book and there was a line from the publisher indicating that at the author's request they did no editing at all. When I saw that I cringed, knowing full well that most self published authors that refuse editing help usually end up with a stream of conciousness writing style that has a great many spelling and contextual errors. Fortunately with this work, the errors were limited. Joseph Bertalmio appears to be a very capable writer who did a good job with the mechanics of writing this story. I did not see any other works by him on Amazon and there was no blurb about him in the book, just the picture on the back, which leads me to believe that he is about the age of the characters in his story--college age or thereabouts and that perhaps this is his first novel. Given what I think is his age explains a good deal about how he went about writing this story.
A brief synopsis of the book is that we are introduced to Taylor Donner, a college student who is forced to face up to the fact that he is deathly ill, which unfortunately coincides with the dead rising from the grave. He is battling with the memories of a horrible suicide of one friend and the horrible circumstances surrounding another friend's situation (I am trying to avoid giving away key details of the story) as the world around him unravels. Meanwhile, Airforce Second Lieutenant Leon Gibbs has been assigned the unenviable task of setting up a blockade around the midwestern college town where the zombie outbreak has occurred. He is not allowed to let anyone out and he is forced to deal with Special Forces, which has swept through, moving into the town to start handling the destruction.
The story follows Taylor's exploits, mostly inside the town, and Leon's which are mostly at the edge of town, and the horrible challenges each of them have to cope with in the face of something so unspeakable.
The story flows smoothly and I can see in the author a good storyteller. He knows how to write, that is for sure. But, and the BUTS are sizeable for me, he deals in a lot of broad generalizations that bothered me. Certainly, I am sure they were meant to bug me, because without a doubt this is a "message" book meant to give the reader a fairly clear idea of what the author feels about all those topics he brings up on the back cover, some of which are: AIDS, handguns, racism, and numerous others not mentioned there including the military, the midwest, college students, locals who live in college towns, small towns, prejudice...the list goes on.
Did he do a good job getting his point across? Yes, if you can stomach some of the stereotypes. The author makes generalized accusations and indictments that go with the territory: the military and the overlords above it are all evil, a black man in the military is typically treated like a dog, gun ownership is innate evil and the cause of many of our woes as a society, midwesterners are racist homophobic Christian Conservatives...the list goes on.
Are his points good ones? Get past the accusations about so many different people and groups posited here and you can see an author working to tackle some of the major issues of our time. He used the guise of a horror novel to do it, which perhaps is meant to camoflage it a bit but everything jumps out at you, spelling out his intentions loud and clear. It feels like he is preaching to the choir, as it were. Those that agree with his views and sentiments will nod their heads yes while those who feel differently, or that his perspective is somewhat narrow will not be impressed with the message here.
As a zombie story, it is decent. I think the author has great potential in this genre or any other he chooses to delve into. Perhaps I did not appreciate everything about it but that is not to say that I do not recommend that someone take this work out for a test drive to judge for themselves. I like the fact that this author has put in a tremendous effort to make his story meaningful, I just believe he pushed too hard, as if he were beating me over the head with an mallet over and over again to get his point across.
Displaying 1 of 1 review