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applesaucecreachur's review
adventurous
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
I almost never read digital books, so this was a strange reading experience for me in a few ways. Frosty Bogart was an unrelatable, unethical, miserable protagonist who was somehow even hard to hate at times. Roche did well here crafting a character who has repressed self-awareness for his entire career and is a worse and funnier person for it. At the same time, Dante's got some screws loose when it comes to telling stories. One of my fellow reviewers on Storygraph referred to this style of storytelling as "stream of consciousness" and I'll adopt that here. Flashbacks snapped to real-time and back again. One minute we're watching Dante pulp some laughers, then we're hearing him wax about his past and the pissed-off people in it; after that, we're back on a bloody beach (or ship deck, or sex dungeon floor, or... you get the idea). Other than zombie apocalypse, the book seemed to have a hard time holding to a cohesive theme throughout. There was a tiger on the loose in the final chapter, for god's sake. And while I'm all for leaving some things unsaid and unanswered, I sure would have liked an explanation for why Dante was immune to the virus thanks to getting tongued. I have other questions, of course, but that one is sure at the front of my mind. Giving credit where it's due, I do respect the amount of research and expertise it must have taken to write a story like this with as much military and technical knowledge as this one. But also, why Panama? Why Central America at all? The author even admits that he took liberties describing the geography in his author's note, so why choose an unfamiliar location in the Global South simply for the vibes? The most let-me-put-the-book-down-and-rub-my-eyes-into-mush-worthy moments came when Dante (Roche?) was describing women – and it should come as no surprise that this was especially uncomfortable with the Black, Latina, and Asian women we encounter in the story. Almost all objects of sexual desire in one way or another (even the seventeen-year-old, Iggy!) , I had to cringe my way through the majority of these passages. I won't act like the female characters were any more or less fleshed out than the males; everyone in the Panama Laugh was a mere character in Frosty's story, and we knew it. But I sure have an issue with substituting a fleshed-out character with... well, describing their flesh. And the things it seemed like they could do with it.
Anyway, happy Easter, I guess. Whenever it gets to be that time.
Anyway, happy Easter, I guess. Whenever it gets to be that time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore and Gun violence
Moderate: Sexism
theinfophile's review against another edition
Do you know that feeling when you get someone the most amazing, perfect present and you want SO BAD just to blurt it out and tell them what it is because they can't open it fast enough or it's not their birthday yet but you are SO EXCITED FOR THEM TO EXPERIENCE THE AWESOME? That feeling? Yeah, that's what I've been holding back and why I read this book quite a while ago, but I wasn't allowing myself to review it as to keep from just telling you the whole goddamned story because it's a helluva good time.
So, I'm going to try to tell you some things I love about this book without giving away the farm.
1) There is a lot of cursing. I love cursing. I curse daily. In fact, I was so swept up in the well-placed cursing that I found myself adding the word "fuck" in places where it wasn't even written.
2) There's some San Francisco. If you know San Francisco, you love San Francisco. You don't know what it is to love a city until you've loved San Francisco. And the descriptions of places that I'm familiar with are so vivid and I swooned because I miss The City.
3) I have a special place in my heart for writers and artists who take normal and typically welcoming or cute things and make them creepy. After reading this book, you will never hear laughter the same way and when someone's laugh is "contagious?" Fuck that. That shit's terrifying.
4) This book is FUN to read. I smiled reading it. I LOL'd (but not too much, mind you). For a good time, I recommend this book.
So, I'm going to try to tell you some things I love about this book without giving away the farm.
1) There is a lot of cursing. I love cursing. I curse daily. In fact, I was so swept up in the well-placed cursing that I found myself adding the word "fuck" in places where it wasn't even written.
2) There's some San Francisco. If you know San Francisco, you love San Francisco. You don't know what it is to love a city until you've loved San Francisco. And the descriptions of places that I'm familiar with are so vivid and I swooned because I miss The City.
3) I have a special place in my heart for writers and artists who take normal and typically welcoming or cute things and make them creepy. After reading this book, you will never hear laughter the same way and when someone's laugh is "contagious?" Fuck that. That shit's terrifying.
4) This book is FUN to read. I smiled reading it. I LOL'd (but not too much, mind you). For a good time, I recommend this book.
thomasroche's review against another edition
This is the best damned book ever. Seriously. I worked my butt off on it, so maybe I'm a little biased. But even if I were entirely objective, I'm sure I would still think this is the War and Peace of bubbafied zombie apocalypses. IF I were entirely objective.
reading_monkey's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to like this book, but I kept putting it down. I didn't like the protagonist Frosty or the way he seemed to be a SPecFor superman.
will_sargent's review
3.0
I was surprised at how many loose ends this book had, and by the disconnect between the internal dialogue of the protagonist and the image that everyone seems to have of him. Seriously, this guy is called Frosty Bogart -- you'd expect him to at least not be quite as loquacious as he is.
The book starts off with an amnesia trope (he doesn't remember anything about the last five years) but doesn't explain much once he gets his memory back. You're never really sure why he starts off in the jungle like he does, why he immediately goes for the place he does, and halfway through the book you're even confused which time period you're in, as Frosty is kidnapping one character in the same place five years ago at the same time he's escaping with her later -- and there are no timestamps or signifiers between the intervals.
Adding up to that... the book just doesn't make any goddamn sense. It's entertaining, but there's no way in hell a resource like Frosty would be left in the place he's in, and once there, there's no way they would have just left him. He's just too damn valuable, and you would have expected Congress, the Executive Branch and half the CEOs in the country to be lined up waiting to slip Frosty some tongue.
So... yeah. A bit like Monster Island, and a bit like Altered Carbon. Enjoyable, but too much stream of consciousness for me.
The book starts off with an amnesia trope (he doesn't remember anything about the last five years) but doesn't explain much once he gets his memory back. You're never really sure why he starts off in the jungle like he does, why he immediately goes for the place he does, and halfway through the book you're even confused which time period you're in, as Frosty is kidnapping one character in the same place five years ago at the same time he's escaping with her later -- and there are no timestamps or signifiers between the intervals.
Adding up to that... the book just doesn't make any goddamn sense. It's entertaining, but there's no way in hell a resource like Frosty would be left in the place he's in, and once there, there's no way they would have just left him. He's just too damn valuable, and you would have expected Congress, the Executive Branch and half the CEOs in the country to be lined up waiting to slip Frosty some tongue.
So... yeah. A bit like Monster Island, and a bit like Altered Carbon. Enjoyable, but too much stream of consciousness for me.
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