Quick reminder for
those not familiar with my so called “reviews”.
I don’t review media in a traditional sense, that is to say that I don’t
typically leave a score or rating unless I’m posting on a site that demands
that sort of thing. I don’t feel that I
can adequately encapsulate my experience with a game or book or movie into a
numbered score or even a lettered one. I
also don’t see a point in it. If you typically
read reviews for recommendations then I do typically leave a list of pros and
cons of the material.
Going Green, by Christina McMullen is an ebook that I came
across through an indie author group on Google+. I have no idea which group it was because I’ve
joined quite a few. I caught this book,
I believe, upon its very first release day.
It was free on day one and I snapped it up as fast as I could. I did so partly to support another indie (with
non-money) and partly to satisfy my curious reading habit. It took me a while but I finally got around
to reading it after a few months.
I found Going Green to be a clever, witty, and very original
take on the clichéd zombie apocalypse genre.
Inside its pages I found a very sardonic and humorous take on life
before, during, and after a future zombie outbreak. The book is cynical as hell in its depiction
of the reaches of mankind and how we have taken our carelessness into space and
relegated NASA to space tourism duties. A
series a bad decisions involving drugs, explosions, space shuttles, showmanship,
and radiation is made by a few characters and leads to the apocalyptic
outbreak. We see selfish government
cover-ups, public ignorance, and poor decision-making in spades. It’s just like the present day, except in
Christina McMullen’s bleak future it’s hilarious. We glimpse all this through well told
vignettes featuring multiple characters.
Each character brings something new to the apocalyptic tale and most I
found to be humorous. There was probably
a bit of inappropriate laughing on my part as well. I laughed a lot while reading this book.
I found all the set-ups here to be utterly plausible. It was a future that I could clearly envision
as I read the book, sadly enough. Even
outlandish scenes like the one involving a certain small time rock star – ahem –
that is to say the Zombie Apocalypse Rock God Jaden Winslow – seemed plausible
in this type of bleak future. Imagine yourself
on a day that could be the turning point for your future. You’re set to have something really big
happen for you, something positive that could change your life for the better. Now imagine on that day, as you’re planning
all the major details, one of your friends tells you that you can’t go through
with it because of a zombie outbreak.
Some of you might just lose it and go a little stir-crazy. Some of you, like me, might just do something
a little stupid, reckless, and cathartic in response to the madness.
I’m not a big fan of zombies—at all. I find them to be a boring trope, genre,
creature, concept, or whatever you want to call them. There’s some interesting ideas to be found in
the concept but it’s been done to death (no pun intended) and not well I
believe. Once you’ve seen one shuffling
brain-dead meat monster, you’ve seen ‘em all.
With all that said, I still found there to be a treasure trove of fresh
and cool ideas in this short read.
The
way the future is setup is pretty neat.
Space has become this “been there, done that” sort of thing and so now corporations
have set up shop and begun making loads of dough on interplanetary tourism. I also liked the fact that certain characters
made viral videos in space and documented themselves as being the first to do
something in space to get in the Guinness record books, even if that something
was super mundane. These zombies are
also “different” in that they aren’t undead.
I don’t believe that’s a spoiler, it doesn’t really spoil anything. In every other way these zombies do seem to
behave like the stereotypical zombie in whatever media you choose to view them. They’re slow, unintelligible, disease filled,
and crave human flesh. They are
different in one major way apart from all that though, but revealing that would
spoil a very interesting chapter and I aint gonna do that.
I loved just about every part of this book and think I’ll
read it again pretty soon. It was a very
short read. You can probably finish it
during a long lunch break or siesta if you’re lucky enough to have those. I didn’t find that to be a problem for this title. It honestly made its point in its eighty-five
pages. I sat up late one night reading
til about three in the morning, laughing like a madman. I honestly don’t have any negatives unless
you count that this book has made me a little self-conscious of my own
writing. Good books always tend to do that
though so I just need to work on my humor more and read more good books.
Ya Dig!:
+Scary possible future
+Highly cynical
+Interspersed with humor
+Clever ideas and imaginative world
+Outlandishness grounded in reality
+Zombies are different
+JADEN WINSLOW: ZOMBIE ROCK GOD
+Smooth read
Watch out for:
-Short book length (though the pacing does feel good)
And that's about it, but don't just take my word for it. Go check it out yourself with the links
below. Tell me what you think and as
always, my glorious readers, thanks for the browse!
Author’s Blog
Amazon Book Link
Goodreads Book Link
