5punk

I finished Roadside Picnic about a week ago and keep forgetting to write about it. But I've remembered now.

I loved the gritty Russian feel to the book. The characters were often alcoholic, chain smoking and foul mouthed in a very believable way - set in a city evacuated by anyone but the scientists who study the Zone and the scumbag 'Stalkers' who go in there to pilfer. The story follows one main character who swings between the two, and he's likeable but rough. Written in a straightforward style, and jumping forward through several years at a time in places, the book retains a nice pace without it being action heavy. In fact Red, the main character, takes great pains to avoid any action on most occasions.

Most of the book is set outside the Zone, so don't expect S.T.A.L.K.E.R - the novel. The bits that are in the Zone are quite tense and anyone who has played the game will be able to easily visualise his journeys. There was also a couple of surprise zombies in it, which was nice.

The only criticism I have is the ending. It just stops. Right as Red gets to the peak of the tension, just as you're itching to find out what happens next, it stops. I hate this. I know that authors use the excuse that they like to make the reader think for themselves about what happens next, but it just strikes me a lazy. If I wanted to make the ending up myself I'd write my own fucking book.

Despite that annoying point, I'd still recommend it.

Next up: The Road.

Dog Pants wrote:Next up: The Road.

That's the same bloke that did No Country For Old Men. I'll have to check that out myself.

Roadside Picnic does end disappointingly abruptly. One thing I found though is the anomalies and artefacts in the book are far more interesting than the ones on the game and film.

spoodie wrote:Roadside Picnic does end disappointingly abruptly. One thing I found though is the anomalies and artefacts in the book are far more interesting than the ones on the game and film.

Yeah, the ones in the game mostly just fucked you up. So far I'm feeling that The Road is quite pretencious - all flowery language, poetic metaphores, and no quote marks when characters speak. I prefer my novels to tell a story, not demonstrate an author's ability to spin pretty sentences. Still, the story itself is interesting so far.

Try some James Joyce then...

Actually The Road is the last in my dystopian series, so if anyone has any serious recommendations (some of you have and I've forgotten them) then speak here and I'll give one or two a go. Or say nothing and I'll get another zombie book.

Dog Pants wrote:Actually The Road is the last in my dystopian series, so if anyone has any serious recommendations (some of you have and I've forgotten them) then speak here and I'll give one or two a go. Or say nothing and I'll get another zombie book.

Not strictly dystopian and you probably wont be able to get them but I read and enjoyed the Sky Lords series recently, written by this bloke. It's more of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy action adventure. Lots of interesting ideas and action. Review

I'm reading World War Z at the moment, which you may have already read. But did you know this?

World War Z is probably my current favourite book, it's brilliant. I'm cacking my pants with glee at the thought of a movie.

Ooh a movie, that'll be good, unless they fuck it up.

Similarly

http://www.naplesnews.com/blogs/observa ... biesentry/

Just finished The Road this morning, and I have mixed feelings about it. The story is of a man and his son journeying south to warmer climes in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It never explains what has happened to the world, and the whole thing is hard for me to swallow - all plant and animal life has died and large fires seem to have swept the country. There's only a handfull of people alive, and food has become extremely rare in the years since the apocalypse as nothing new grows so it is all scavenged. I couldn't imagine any scenario that could result in this and he never explains, so there was always a niggling disbelief for me.

I've already said I don't like flowery, poetic writing, but this seems to tail out as the book goes on and he's described the world. His grammar is atrocious though, although I never worked out if it was deliberate or not. At first I thought the lack of quote marks for speech was to symbolise something when the boy and the man spoke to each other, but I flicked through No Country For Old Men in Tesco and that was the same. I came to the conclusion that he is either very poor at grammar (and not so hot at spelling for that matter, describing a can of chile at one point) and has no idea how to use an apostrophe, or that he's trying to be clever and shunning conventional English. For the former I'd blame lazy publishing rather than him, the latter is just pretencious.

Despite the fancy metaphores and bad grammar, McCarthey can certainly tell a story. The interaction between the two characters is brief but poignant, and every step they take is tense and compelling. The characters they meet on the road differ wildly, as does their reactions to them, despite only limited interaction in most cases.

In all, a very interesting read. Seems a little amateur in technique, but the human aspects of the book were faultless.

No more dystopia for now, I've run out. I'm moving on to a zombie book (Plague of the Dead I think it's called).

That sounds like A Boy and His Dog, which is worth a watch.

Dog Pants wrote:World War Z is probably my current favourite book, it's brilliant. I'm cacking my pants with glee at the thought of a movie.

Finished now and I thought it was excellent. The amount of detail and obvious research that has gone into it is impressive.

.

I wrote more than one paper covering various things such as suicide in the rich west, capitalism, dissatisfaction amongst the affluent, religious extremism etc.

They all had facts and figures supplied by governments, aid agencies and independent scientific research and some of the older papers pre 9/11 all pointed to the fact that within the next decade there would be a global meltdown triggered by some great event.

This event would cause ripples through established socio-economic structure, geo-political turmoil and financial unrest, at the time it was labelled scare mongering by most sources.

The book you just read isn't dystopian fiction, it's the reality around us.