![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
An extremely generic fungus apocalypse novel with a mildly grabby beginning. I read this while half-delirious from lack of sleep on a red-eye plane trip, then deleted as I would never read it again.
Scarlett is a fifteen-year-old in Los Angeles who goes to a baseball game at Dodger Stadium with her family the day the world ends. A man starts screaming about foul balls, then his head explodes. Two white fungus stalks poke out of what remains of his head and form balls at the top which explode in a cloud of spores. A day or two later, everyone in LA but her is dead of exploding head fungus. She appears to be immune.
"White stalks poking through" the remains of heads are described in those exact words over and over and over. (They never thrust or protrude or grow. They only ever poke.) Scarlett grabs supplies, then worries that other survivors, if they exist, will steal them from her. Why would they steal the supplies she grabbed from random houses and stores when everyone is dead and they can grab their own supplies from houses and stores?
There is a general problem with the author bringing up issues that don't really make sense, or only to unconvincingly dismiss them. Scarlett realizes that pets are locked up in homes and pet stores, and animals are locked up in zoos. She thinks of releasing as many as she can to save their lives, then decides that it's enough of a problem for her dealing with the dogs that are already loose and she doesn't want to be stalked by a jaguar.
Why not release only the harmless animals? This feels like an issue that the author thought of, then didn't want to write about, so he brought it up only to dismiss it. I think if he didn't want to deal with it, then he should have just not mentioned it. Having Scarlett deliberately decide to leave a lot of harmless animals to die does not make her sympathetic, but it's clearly meant to make her seem practical rather than selfish.
It's annoying when an author brings up a potentially interesting plotline only to dismiss it in favor of a boring one. Have Scarlett go to the zoo to release the animals, not just wander around LA alone some more! Have Mrs. Pollifax impersonate a fortuneteller while hiding out at a carnival, not lock herself up alone in a caravan!
The rest of the fungus book proceeds along incredibly predictable paths.
Scarlett finds more survivors, a teenage boy, a Spanish-speaking woman, and a pregnant woman who dies giving birth. They're all held hostage by a non-immune survivalist, who's then killed by the US army who takes them captive and experiments on them, infecting the Spanish-speaking woman and an old man with a serum that removes their immunity so they die of fungus. Scarlett and Chad (yes really) escape with the baby, and go to Big Bear to live in a little post-apocalyptic nuclear family. Three years later, they're still at it. The end.
This book is not good, but it served to entertain me when I could barely pay attention to anything, so it served its purpose.
Scarlett is a fifteen-year-old in Los Angeles who goes to a baseball game at Dodger Stadium with her family the day the world ends. A man starts screaming about foul balls, then his head explodes. Two white fungus stalks poke out of what remains of his head and form balls at the top which explode in a cloud of spores. A day or two later, everyone in LA but her is dead of exploding head fungus. She appears to be immune.
"White stalks poking through" the remains of heads are described in those exact words over and over and over. (They never thrust or protrude or grow. They only ever poke.) Scarlett grabs supplies, then worries that other survivors, if they exist, will steal them from her. Why would they steal the supplies she grabbed from random houses and stores when everyone is dead and they can grab their own supplies from houses and stores?
There is a general problem with the author bringing up issues that don't really make sense, or only to unconvincingly dismiss them. Scarlett realizes that pets are locked up in homes and pet stores, and animals are locked up in zoos. She thinks of releasing as many as she can to save their lives, then decides that it's enough of a problem for her dealing with the dogs that are already loose and she doesn't want to be stalked by a jaguar.
Why not release only the harmless animals? This feels like an issue that the author thought of, then didn't want to write about, so he brought it up only to dismiss it. I think if he didn't want to deal with it, then he should have just not mentioned it. Having Scarlett deliberately decide to leave a lot of harmless animals to die does not make her sympathetic, but it's clearly meant to make her seem practical rather than selfish.
It's annoying when an author brings up a potentially interesting plotline only to dismiss it in favor of a boring one. Have Scarlett go to the zoo to release the animals, not just wander around LA alone some more! Have Mrs. Pollifax impersonate a fortuneteller while hiding out at a carnival, not lock herself up alone in a caravan!
The rest of the fungus book proceeds along incredibly predictable paths.
Scarlett finds more survivors, a teenage boy, a Spanish-speaking woman, and a pregnant woman who dies giving birth. They're all held hostage by a non-immune survivalist, who's then killed by the US army who takes them captive and experiments on them, infecting the Spanish-speaking woman and an old man with a serum that removes their immunity so they die of fungus. Scarlett and Chad (yes really) escape with the baby, and go to Big Bear to live in a little post-apocalyptic nuclear family. Three years later, they're still at it. The end.
This book is not good, but it served to entertain me when I could barely pay attention to anything, so it served its purpose.