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rovertoak's review
5.0
I paid a pretty penny for a somewhat beat-up copy of this book and I'll tell you...I'd have paid three times as much knowing what I know now about Blood Crazy. It's 28 Days Later, Lord of the Flies, Jung's [b: The Undiscovered Self|67891|The Undiscovered Self|Carl Gustav Jung|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388255319s/67891.jpg|119037], [b: Origin of the Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941], and Braveheart expertly collided with the force of a ten megaton bomb.
The novel begins with confusion and plenty of gory action, as 17-year-old Nick Aten (rhymes with Satan) begins to notice strange goings on. The adult population has become murderously insane, preying on anyone under the age of 20. There's plenty of fear and close calls as Nick collects other teens on his desperate journey to safety. The group stumbles on a community of other kids and teens looking to rebuild society from scratch by organizing, scavenging, and defending against the hordes of adult attackers. Many good zombie/apocalyptic novels include elements similar to these and come to satisfying, if not at times hopeless, finales. Instead, Simon Clark sends Nick Aten further, on a hero's quest nothing short of Tolkienesque in its breadth and duration.
Without spoiling this novel for readers who end up spending some decent coin for this read, know that there is much substance lurking once the reader has gotten the details of the apocalypse out of the way. This book offers the gift of hope to its characters...and readers...and gives us good reason not to trust anyone over the age of TWENTY!
The novel begins with confusion and plenty of gory action, as 17-year-old Nick Aten (rhymes with Satan) begins to notice strange goings on. The adult population has become murderously insane, preying on anyone under the age of 20. There's plenty of fear and close calls as Nick collects other teens on his desperate journey to safety. The group stumbles on a community of other kids and teens looking to rebuild society from scratch by organizing, scavenging, and defending against the hordes of adult attackers. Many good zombie/apocalyptic novels include elements similar to these and come to satisfying, if not at times hopeless, finales. Instead, Simon Clark sends Nick Aten further, on a hero's quest nothing short of Tolkienesque in its breadth and duration.
Without spoiling this novel for readers who end up spending some decent coin for this read, know that there is much substance lurking once the reader has gotten the details of the apocalypse out of the way. This book offers the gift of hope to its characters...and readers...and gives us good reason not to trust anyone over the age of TWENTY!
xterminal's review against another edition
4.0
Simon Clark, Blood Crazy (Leisure, 1995)
How this book gets characterized as a young adult novel is completely beyond me. Hey, folks: just because a novel's protagonist is under twenty-one years of age does not make a novel aimed at the young adult market.
Nick Aten ("rhymes with Satan") goes to bed one night convinced that all is right with the world. He wakes up the next morning and finds out how terribly wrong he is; something has caused all of the world's adults to go crazy and start killing their children. Those who have no children just go after everyone under a certain age (undetermined at the beginning of the book). Needless to say, the children are not altogether happy with this. Nick escapes and heads out of town, banding together with various other survivors against millions of people whose whole goal is their destruction.
In other words, it's your basic post-apocalyptic novel. And from that perspective, it's a good enough read. It's hard to review this objectively, since I had it marketed to me as a young adult novel; it reads like an adult novel, and so I'm concerned my ideas about it are going to cross one line or the other, since the two are often entirely different animals. Thankfully, it's a decent book as both, though a little on the adult side for being a YA read.
Simon Clark has a good sense of the dramatic, and the book is paced and plotted well. Granted, postapocalyptic lit is fast becoming its own subgenre, and it's not too hard to plot these days (a reading of The Stand, a reading of Swan Song, and a screening of The Omega Man, and you're pretty much set; elements of all three show up here, of course). His characters are for the most part solid and well-built, with a few cardboard-esque exceptions. The main reason, I'm guessing, this was thought to be a YA novel is the Nick Aten's narrative voice, which is naïve; too much so at times. (One wonders why that's still considered a YA trait, given the popularity of the romance genre.)
Readable, fast-paced, and worthwhile for horror fans. *** ½
How this book gets characterized as a young adult novel is completely beyond me. Hey, folks: just because a novel's protagonist is under twenty-one years of age does not make a novel aimed at the young adult market.
Nick Aten ("rhymes with Satan") goes to bed one night convinced that all is right with the world. He wakes up the next morning and finds out how terribly wrong he is; something has caused all of the world's adults to go crazy and start killing their children. Those who have no children just go after everyone under a certain age (undetermined at the beginning of the book). Needless to say, the children are not altogether happy with this. Nick escapes and heads out of town, banding together with various other survivors against millions of people whose whole goal is their destruction.
In other words, it's your basic post-apocalyptic novel. And from that perspective, it's a good enough read. It's hard to review this objectively, since I had it marketed to me as a young adult novel; it reads like an adult novel, and so I'm concerned my ideas about it are going to cross one line or the other, since the two are often entirely different animals. Thankfully, it's a decent book as both, though a little on the adult side for being a YA read.
Simon Clark has a good sense of the dramatic, and the book is paced and plotted well. Granted, postapocalyptic lit is fast becoming its own subgenre, and it's not too hard to plot these days (a reading of The Stand, a reading of Swan Song, and a screening of The Omega Man, and you're pretty much set; elements of all three show up here, of course). His characters are for the most part solid and well-built, with a few cardboard-esque exceptions. The main reason, I'm guessing, this was thought to be a YA novel is the Nick Aten's narrative voice, which is naïve; too much so at times. (One wonders why that's still considered a YA trait, given the popularity of the romance genre.)
Readable, fast-paced, and worthwhile for horror fans. *** ½
rovertoak's review against another edition
5.0
I paid a pretty penny for a somewhat beat-up copy of this book and I'll tell you...I'd have paid three times as much knowing what I know now about Blood Crazy. It's 28 Days Later, Lord of the Flies, Jung's [b: The Undiscovered Self|67891|The Undiscovered Self|Carl Gustav Jung|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388255319s/67891.jpg|119037], [b: Origin of the Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941], and Braveheart expertly collided with the force of a ten megaton bomb.
The novel begins with confusion and plenty of gory action, as 17-year-old Nick Aten (rhymes with Satan) begins to notice strange goings on. The adult population has become murderously insane, preying on anyone under the age of 20. There's plenty of fear and close calls as Nick collects other teens on his desperate journey to safety. The group stumbles on a community of other kids and teens looking to rebuild society from scratch by organizing, scavenging, and defending against the hordes of adult attackers. Many good zombie/apocalyptic novels include elements similar to these and come to satisfying, if not at times hopeless, finales. Instead, Simon Clark sends Nick Aten further, on a hero's quest nothing short of Tolkienesque in its breadth and duration.
Without spoiling this novel for readers who end up spending some decent coin for this read, know that there is much substance lurking once the reader has gotten the details of the apocalypse out of the way. This book offers the gift of hope to its characters...and readers...and gives us good reason not to trust anyone over the age of TWENTY!
The novel begins with confusion and plenty of gory action, as 17-year-old Nick Aten (rhymes with Satan) begins to notice strange goings on. The adult population has become murderously insane, preying on anyone under the age of 20. There's plenty of fear and close calls as Nick collects other teens on his desperate journey to safety. The group stumbles on a community of other kids and teens looking to rebuild society from scratch by organizing, scavenging, and defending against the hordes of adult attackers. Many good zombie/apocalyptic novels include elements similar to these and come to satisfying, if not at times hopeless, finales. Instead, Simon Clark sends Nick Aten further, on a hero's quest nothing short of Tolkienesque in its breadth and duration.
Without spoiling this novel for readers who end up spending some decent coin for this read, know that there is much substance lurking once the reader has gotten the details of the apocalypse out of the way. This book offers the gift of hope to its characters...and readers...and gives us good reason not to trust anyone over the age of TWENTY!
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