Category: Reviews

Having a blog means having an opinion. This category groups reviews of technology, concerts, books, food – essentially all things consumable.

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Book Review: Zone One by Colson Whitehead

( #ZoneOne, #Zombies )

Frequent readers of this blog know I love zombies and that in my opinion “World War Z” is by far the best zombie fiction written to date (I am just getting that out of the way). That being said, Colson Whitehead’s “Zone One” is an excellent entry into the genre. It is well written, takes a unique perspective, and leaves the reader wanting more.

Whitehead has an interesting writing style. His paragraphs are dense and somewhat circular. This is not a criticism by any means but not something you see often in horror fiction (and certainly not in zombie fiction). There is an almost poetic rhythm that left me with the impression that Whitehead labored over each word. Since I tend to speed read, I found myself going over sentences a few times to make sure I got everything (bravo for making me savor the page).

The story is about recovery after a zombie apocalypse (similar to “World War Z”). Unlike WWZ, humanity is not on solid ground. The zombies are still active and the recovered areas are under siege by the undead. The main character, Mark, is part of a team that is assigned to sweep New York city. The army has already done most of the heavy lifting, but buildings and tunnels still need to be checked and cleared for repopulation. As the team clears out the buildings, they tell each other their survival stories (so readers can learn the history of the plague).

This book has a harder tone than WWZ, but it is still not as bleak as most of the zombie fiction out there. The main theme of survival is played out in a variety of ways: the characters demonstrate a clear will to live, but there is also tremendous survivor’s guilt. Most zombie fiction comes with social criticism, “Zone One” is light but Whitehead hints at an undercurrent of disgust at the reformed government’s attempt at recreating society as it was.

“Zone One” is an well written book that is less horror and more about the personal toll of surviving a disaster. If you enjoyed WWZ, I have no doubt you will like this book.

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Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

( #StephenKing )

I finished up my “holiday reading” choice last night around 3:00 AM. I had “11/22/63” by Stephen King sitting on the shelf for a month and decided it was time to knock it out. The story centers around a teacher that finds a time portal to 1958. He quickly decides to stick around in the past for a few years to stop the Kennedy assassination.

Once you accept the time portal as a plot device, the book falls into a steady pace. The first half sets up the main character (Jake) and how he operates in the past. King develops rules about time travel, essentially cosmic forces push back when someone attempts to alter time. For example if you are trying to stop someone from getting shot, the road you are taking may be blocked by an overturned truck. Jake also opts to take on a few smaller side missions, averting tragedies that happened to friends or children he read about. Failure means Jake would have to go back into the time portal which hits the reset button every time (so he has to do each thing over again and it becomes harder).

The book slows down considerably when Jake hits Texas. He establishes a life for himself and bunkers down for the three years while he waits for Oswald to arrive in Dallas. Life in small town Texas and the friendships Jake develops reads well, but when the plot shifts back to stopping Lee Harvey, something doesn’t feel right. The tone of the book never recovers. Without giving too much away, the cosmic forces start to push back and the crazy commences. King does such a good job foreshadowing these threads, they never come off as shocking. Since you know it is coming, it just feels like you are flipping pages until the next thing happens.

Without giving the big plot point away, Jake being in the past for 5 years changes things, which cause some “Back to the Future Part 2” kind of problem at the end of the story. King introduces characters/concepts at the end of the book that feel like they may be part of another King story, but I haven’t read it (King has a cameo featuring “It” characters in the first part of the book). He offers a little more information about the time portal which was nice, but unnecessary.

Even though the “11/22/63” drags in the middle, I liked this book. If for nothing else, King does a great job of painting life in the 1960s. My friends and I often sit around and talk about our zombie survival plans, I feel like people who grew up during the Kennedy era probably had similar conversations about “if you could go back in time, how would you stop the Kennedy assassination”. This is how Stephen King would do it – I can respect that.

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Tis the Season: Skating

( #xmas )

My friends Jack, Lorraine, Amber, and Tom played some tunes last year at my house on Xmas Eve. They won’t be attending this year, so I figured I would share some video throughout the day to help everyone get in the Xmas spirit.

NOTE: Looks like youtube added a snow effect for the holiday season. Be sure to turn it on! There is a snowflake button on the controls if you mouse over it (how cool is that!)

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Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

( #TheNightCircus, #ErinMorgenstern )

I just finished reading Erin Morgenstern’s “The Night Circus” and I found myself liking it more than I thought I would. The book is about a mysterious traveling circus that (if you can’t figure it out by the title), opens only at night. This circus is essentially the best ever because there are a few members of the crew who can actually do “real magic.” Morgenstern hints that the “magic” is more like science but never gets to deep into the technical details.

The story revolves around a bet made by two old rivals. They train young children (the more villainous of the two uses his own daughter) to engage in a decades-long competition that neither student know the rules to. The circus becomes their battleground as each one tries to out-do each other with attractions and optical illusions. Neither student can interfere or tamper with the other’s work. Of course as the children get older and find out each other’s identities, they fall in love (snore).

The best part of the book is that Morgenstern doesn’t give the reader a hint about how the ending. Neither character “goes dark” or tries to take advantage of the other, and Morgenstern plays by the rules she created for her universe. The romantic aspects of the book are weak and feels like “Water for Elephants” – the “I love you but I can’t be with you” nonsense, but Morgenstern wisely leverages her secondary characters to add atmosphere and back story so the primary plot of the love story utilizes the least amount of pages possible.

“The Night Circus” works because the plot moves along at a good pace and the writer did an excellent job of keeping reader interest high. I won’t say it is a great book, but it is good and I enjoyed the time I spent with it.