Ok,
here I go with a zombie book. I pride myself on being well-read to
the tune of sometimes seeming pretentious. Often I will pooh-pooh a
book that I think is not worth reading because there isn't enough to
think about, but how do I explain my fixation with zombie and
post-apocalyptic literature? Well....
I
don't have to! I am 59 years old, retired, and I will read what I
want. When I was young I often would read a book such as this and
just not tell anyone and to that I say, “pish posh!” This book is
good. A friend of mine told me about it prefacing her recommendation
with the fact that she doesn't like “zombie books” so I had to
try it. I was a little leery as I recognized that the title is a
quote from the Bible (to be found in Matthew 13) and I don't have a
lot of luck liking the genre “Christian fiction.” But I put it on
my Nook and read it in one sitting being almost immediately
transfixed.
Not
being a simple zombie/survival book, this book contained issues to
make me ponder a bit about the evil men do in harsh situations when
trying to survive, or when trying to keep something worse from
happening. It isn't meant to be simply a horror story and it is much
more. It's really more about human nature and morals during times of
harsh situations. If you read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which
is a book I would also recommend, you should notice a
similarity of style and plot. If you read Reapers you just
might be inclined to do a bit of soul-searching, introspection, and
perhaps even maybe some self-examination of your own priorities.
Sometime
in the future and several decades after some type of apocalyptic
event Temple, age 15 is on her own and on the move to escape the
“meatskins” that are getting too close to her lighthouse den.
Temple has been surviving mostly on her own since she was five. At
one point she had a brother and the reader knows she is haunted by
something that happened in her past. She has been born into this
world and so she has lived finding gifts and wonders where she finds
them such as glittering fish in the first chapter. She also has
learned how to interact with other survivors and seems to have
instincts about who to trust and when to flee from those she doesn't.
One
of the quotes in the front of the book is from Stephen King's Pet
Cemetery, “Sometimes dead is better.” So the reader knows
from the start that a character in the story for whom you have come
to care about dies. However, when it happened I had to say, “Sh_ _!
I didn't see that coming. I had to reread that last chapter before
realizing that the author made the character Moses so driven by the
mores of his culture before the apocalypse that he cannot change.
Temple has no previous culture to so her motives are simply to live,
learn, and survive.
Told
in present tense helps to keep the reader focused on Temple's inner
turmoil and to be there with her while fighting the evils that
present themselves. Her travels take her to enclaves of people trying
to rebuild civilization, to Maury an intellectually challenged mute,
and to a village of mutants. There is suspense, horror, hope, love,
and a lot of action to keep one turning the pages, or clicking the
next page button as I did. Temple is a fully formed and vibrant
character and she will stay with you for a long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment