Reviews

I liked a lot of things about this book—interesting premise, some likable characters, exciting action, well executed plot and decent writing. A lot of this story takes place in the head of the main character, a 16 or 17 year-old girl named Lucy with a lot of traumatic backstory. I liked Lucy. She’s tough, smart and is able to tap into her past trauma for some of that strength. My only problem is that a lot of the time as I was listening to her thought process I just didn’t believe these were the thoughts of a teenage girl. It wasn’t all the time but it was often enough to be noticeable and it would take me out of the flow of the story. A minor complaint for a book that I actually really enjoyed.

erikbergstrom's review against another edition

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3.0

Overall, this was a refreshing read. Johnson's short story collection "Entropy In Bloom" was also one of my favorites across a wide range of horror collections, so I was hoping he'd bring "it" with this book. For the most part, he did! The Nightwatchman stuff comes right off the page, especially. It's almost scary how well he writes this character... I think Johnson would be a great conspiracy podcaster.

I almost never say this, but I think the book was a little too.... abbreviated? You've got a Terminator-level conspiracy here with major, global implications and a remorseful engineer character, however most of the running time is spent on chase sequences between kids that go a little too long, for my tastes. I understand this is a horror book and not a Jack Ryan thriller, but the world Johnson opened up here could really have been served well by letting readers soak in it a little more, I think. A book I've read relatively recently is Benjamin Percy's Red Moon, and I think its length allows for both a personal tale and a much larger one to flourish. As a sort of late-blooming science nerd, I would've loved to have spent more time with the octopus-generated microchips of IMTECH.

Overall, Johnson's writing style was a breath of fresh air. It's to-the-point, no nonsense, a little fun here and there without being Stephen King-levels of jarring. Basically, it's a confident style, moving along nicely. I guess maybe that's why I'd be interested in seeing how he'd stretch himself over a novel twice the length of this one. At least give us a sequel... one that could be T2 levels of awesome!

kleonard's review against another edition

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5.0

I read this in a blaze--not because it was bad, but because it is a fantastic ride of a horror story of the creature variety, with fights and twists and poignant moments and some very true high school student behaviors and a Final Girl to blow away all other Final Girls. In a small town in Oregon, the local med-tech company starts experimenting on high school students, and as you'd expect, things do not go well. Altered students rampage, killing and infecting the town, while adults fall into induced comas, only to be murdered by said students. Lucia, who has been a survivor all her life, leads a handful of friends though a harrowing pursuit as they seek shelter and safety. It's a terrific race against attackers and time to the very last page. If you like horror, creatures, conspiracies, big business gone bad, people getting their comeuppances, and Strong Female Protagonists, you're going to love this.

punkcalf's review against another edition

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2.0

Where to begin with this book, there is so much to say and yet nothing will feel just right.

Would i recommend this book? No.
Did I hate reading it? Also no-ish.

First of all; I really enjoyed the first half of the novel. The characters were fun and the plot was set up really well but then it goes off the rails and wants to be everything and because of that falls short on all fronts.

The characters become dull and repeat themselves, characters drop like flies but they often do in these kinds of books but other than the main character they get so little time for the audience to get a feel for them that you don't care if they do finally die.
There are too many characters too, which is a problem that I ran in with. There is a character named Jason and one named Jake and I kept confusing them with one another. Characters show up at page 10 and then again at page 250 and the reader is supposed to remember who they were or are. This novel would have been better if they dropped half the cast or just made them unnamed or call them "The boy from school" or something like that.

Then there is the mess of the plot. It starts out easy enough. The kids start acting up during a party and it goes south from there. It had some zombie-vibes but these kids aren't exactly zombies. Which is fine! I love the zombie genre and I'm always ready to have a twist on it. I really liked for example

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how they seemed to be able to fight the infection. That was clever and really well done

. But then it wants to be everything at once and there it becomes a mess.

It isn't just a zombie-esque novel, it also

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mentions aliens, it's also about a bio weapon, human suffering, a disaster movie, a tragedy

and because of it being so so much, it ends up doing nothing well.

I am someone who can handle a lot of swearing but this book took it and dialled it up to 11. It works for dialogue but for narration it falls flat and took me out of the experience.

I also didn't quite vibe with the writing style. There are pages upon pages with a character talking without stopping. The formatting is a mess and it feels like reading a college essay. At a different point two characters were talking and after re-reading the page for the sixth time I gave up and just accepted the fact that I had no idea who was speaking right now.

While I don't mind gore, especially not in horror novels, which this book is. I did take offense to the

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mention of rape. It served no purpose other than the women in the group being 'glad' they couldn't be sexually abused. It was so weird and out of place and the novel would have made 0 difference if the author omitted that bit.

adding that, to me, felt like adding some extra shock value for the benefit of having shock value.

This book had me hooked from the beginning but I found myself so confused and bored at the end that the ending gave me zero satisfaction. I never watched Stranger Things [which the blurb claims this book is, mixed with World War Z] but it lacks the feeling that show has and it certainly misses the heart.

anna_giub's review against another edition

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3.0

I wasn’t feeling this book at first, it felt too much like the backstory & motivations of the characters and why they acted like they did was missing. The missing piece I wanted ended being there in the latter half of the book which I appreciated. Last half of the book gets 4 stars, beginning gets 2 stars so evening out to 3.

rougarou's review against another edition

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As someone who was raised on the xfiles and twilight zone, yeah I was on board with all of this.

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