Scan barcode
xterminal's review
3.0
Lorne Dixon, The Lifeless (Coscom Entertainment, 2009)
I was all set to give The Lifeless, if not a rave review, then at least a very good one. I was with Dixon from page one all the way to the very climax of the book... and then there was this huge explosion that left the continuity of the book, and consequently my ability to suspend disbelief, in ruins. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First off, the plot. It begins with some generic-Arab-terrorists in New York City getting ready for an attack that will dwarf anything they've ever done before. It succeeds all too well. Cut to a high school just across the river in Verlaine, New Jersey, where the students are called into an assembly to be told about the terrorist attacks. One of those students is Mike, a small-time drug dealer who had sent his pal and sometime partner Jasper into the city not long before the assembly was called. Jasper, therefore, has no clue what's going on, despite the large amber clouds billowing up over New York. He doesn't see the news footage of the amber rain coming from them that first eats through flesh like acid, killing those it touches, then causes them to rise from the dead as flesh-hungry zombies. He's got no clue. And he's bored, and wants to get Mike out of school. So, as the amber clouds waft across the river in a haze of thunder, Jasper calls in a bomb threat. And when the rain comes, only nine students and an assistant principal are left in the building, while the rest of the students, faculty, and staff of the high school have become zombies, and they're looking for their next meal.
All well and good. The writing is amateur, and Dixon could have certainly used an editor (or even a proofreader would have done), but I don't generally count points off for that. No, what killed me here is a continuity error of massive proportions. In the opening terrorist scene, we see the terrorists with syringes. We know that when they inject themselves with the contents of those syringes, they become human weapons of mass destruction, exploding into those amber clouds. We know this, yes... but there's no way the surviving characters in the novel could know this. So when one of them circumvents a problem by grabbing one of those syringes and jamming it into her leg, you kind of have to stop and say “what the hell?”. Because there's no way, at least no way we have been shown in the novel, that that character could know what effect jamming that syringe into her leg would have. (There are other minor continuity errors as well, having to do with the spread of the disease, but to discuss those in any detail would lead to ultimate spoilers, going right through to the final page of the book, so I can't do anything other than note their existence.) That sort of thing drives me nuts, and it caused me to knock the rating for this one down quite a ways. A bit of rewriting, a setup scene back farther or the like, might have made this one an above-average zombie thriller; instead, it's a decent book undermined by major structural flaws. **
I was all set to give The Lifeless, if not a rave review, then at least a very good one. I was with Dixon from page one all the way to the very climax of the book... and then there was this huge explosion that left the continuity of the book, and consequently my ability to suspend disbelief, in ruins. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First off, the plot. It begins with some generic-Arab-terrorists in New York City getting ready for an attack that will dwarf anything they've ever done before. It succeeds all too well. Cut to a high school just across the river in Verlaine, New Jersey, where the students are called into an assembly to be told about the terrorist attacks. One of those students is Mike, a small-time drug dealer who had sent his pal and sometime partner Jasper into the city not long before the assembly was called. Jasper, therefore, has no clue what's going on, despite the large amber clouds billowing up over New York. He doesn't see the news footage of the amber rain coming from them that first eats through flesh like acid, killing those it touches, then causes them to rise from the dead as flesh-hungry zombies. He's got no clue. And he's bored, and wants to get Mike out of school. So, as the amber clouds waft across the river in a haze of thunder, Jasper calls in a bomb threat. And when the rain comes, only nine students and an assistant principal are left in the building, while the rest of the students, faculty, and staff of the high school have become zombies, and they're looking for their next meal.
All well and good. The writing is amateur, and Dixon could have certainly used an editor (or even a proofreader would have done), but I don't generally count points off for that. No, what killed me here is a continuity error of massive proportions. In the opening terrorist scene, we see the terrorists with syringes. We know that when they inject themselves with the contents of those syringes, they become human weapons of mass destruction, exploding into those amber clouds. We know this, yes... but there's no way the surviving characters in the novel could know this. So when one of them circumvents a problem by grabbing one of those syringes and jamming it into her leg, you kind of have to stop and say “what the hell?”. Because there's no way, at least no way we have been shown in the novel, that that character could know what effect jamming that syringe into her leg would have. (There are other minor continuity errors as well, having to do with the spread of the disease, but to discuss those in any detail would lead to ultimate spoilers, going right through to the final page of the book, so I can't do anything other than note their existence.) That sort of thing drives me nuts, and it caused me to knock the rating for this one down quite a ways. A bit of rewriting, a setup scene back farther or the like, might have made this one an above-average zombie thriller; instead, it's a decent book undermined by major structural flaws. **
More...