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delia_reads's review
3.0
I was excited for a book about some sort of monster mushroom taking over a city but this is really a more human-scaled story about a neighborhood and its inhabitants trying to find their place in life after a fungal attack displaces them from their homes. The narrator of this audiobook is really fun with a throaty, gravelly voice that gives each character great spark and vitality. Her accents, from Russian to NYC's various regional dialects, work nicely to give texture as well. There's little closure in the book and the melancholy ending came rather abruptly for me (the pitfall of an e-audiobook format) after the madcap dynamic of its early chapters. This is not at all a sci-fi story and it's weird that this book has somehow fallen into that category. It's most definitely a story about survivors coping with adversity, confusion, and loss. It's about love, community, and family - finding and/or losing it. And only incidentally, an invasive, glowing mushroom MacGuffin and its spores.
Lastly, what is both unacknowledged but also unavoidably in the subtext of this story, at least for me, is thinking about other less privileged survivors of natural disasters that get displaced in places like Puerto Rico, New Orleans, and Haiti and how the struggle continues well after the "newsworthiness" of those disasters fade.
Lastly, what is both unacknowledged but also unavoidably in the subtext of this story, at least for me, is thinking about other less privileged survivors of natural disasters that get displaced in places like Puerto Rico, New Orleans, and Haiti and how the struggle continues well after the "newsworthiness" of those disasters fade.
unsquare's review
2.0
I got bored with this book halfway through and almost didn’t finish reading. Instead, I listened to The Apocalypse Codex and then decided to give this another shot since it is relatively short.
My main problem with Act of God is that it isn’t nearly as interesting as the cover or the summary implies. It’s a story about four women catastrophically affected by fast-growing mutant mushrooms that infest their homes, which makes it sound like the book is going to be weirder than it is.
You could replace the mushrooms with any natural disaster and tell about the same story. Aside from that hook, the book isn’t all that compelling.
My main problem with Act of God is that it isn’t nearly as interesting as the cover or the summary implies. It’s a story about four women catastrophically affected by fast-growing mutant mushrooms that infest their homes, which makes it sound like the book is going to be weirder than it is.
You could replace the mushrooms with any natural disaster and tell about the same story. Aside from that hook, the book isn’t all that compelling.
writersbeard's review
4.0
kcourts's review
2.0
A cast of characters that we never really get to know navigate a crazy mold infestation and its aftermath. It felt more like an unfinished novella to me.
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