author: David Agranoff

name: Steev

average rating: 3.58

book published: 2010

rating: 2

read at: 2012/08/29

date added: 2012/08/29

shelves: after-the-fall, food, fun, own-it, novels, politics

review:
This book is a comedic satire with an interesting and funny premise: what if some chemical in all the animal products caused non-vegans to turn into zombies? However, in the execution of this idea the thing has lots of problems. I will just list them out:
1. It really should have been better copy-edited, or at all. It's full of typos, spelling errors, grammatical errors, and punctuation errors, to the point where I wonder if the author even re-read his work after writing it, and/or whether he ever passed an English class at a higher level than 7th grade.

2. The book is full of what i call "Portland exceptionalism" - the idea that Portland is some kind of ultimate mecca, different and better in every way. As a former Portland resident that would still be living there if I didn't need more sunshine, I understand the allure of the place, but this kind of attitude is something that keeps getting more and more common and more and more extreme.

3. Besides the poor English errors, it's just, frankly, bad writing. The sentences are very simplistic. The characters and any development they undergo are really obvious, stereotypical, and cliched. The plot is pretty by-the-numbers - at no point do I really worry about any of the heroes or the final outcome, there's no real suspense, since the zombies are so clearly weak, powerless, and easy to kill or avoid.

4. There's some fun humor in the book and great critique of various silly and hypocritical subcultures like freegans, raw-foodists, locavores, and many types of hipsters, juggaloes, and more, but: the book is basically a really overly didactic vegan sermon. Now, I'm sympathetic to the causes and the points made in the book, but it's just painful to read something that's so preachy, especially since there's not much else in the book plot or character-wise to make up for that.

The book is basically "liberal snuff porn" - what if you woke up one day and could finally really shoot in the head all those annoying yuppies and hipsters you hate? - which, as a liberal, I can agree can be fun for a while. But it's not going to change any minds and it's only going to really entertain some smug, simple-minded Portland vegans. If it had been a short story, maybe 10,000 words at most, instead of a novel, some of the above problems could have been mitigated or eliminated. To be sure, if it had been much longer I would not have finished it. I only wish my town still had a smug, simple-minded infoshop that I could leave the book at for some young, earnest traveller kids to find and confirm for themselves that Portland is just as cool as they already know it is.