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A review by otherwyrld
Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human
4.0
Baxter Zevcenko is your typical teenage schoolboy. You know the type - make out with your girlfriend as much as possible, beat your retarded brother up when your mother isn't watching, make the teachers cry and have panic attacks, sell hardcore pornography to your schoolmates, the usual. Then one day his girlfriend goes missing and he is the prime suspect because he has these "urges", and that's when he gets introduced to a seriously weird supernatural world.
In some respects this story reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer though instead of a female American teenager who is destined to be the Chosen One, here we have a male South African teenager instead. The "School is Hell" feel of Buffy comes out well here, though I suspect that even Buffy would struggle in a place like this, Alex and his Droogs would soon be crying into their Molokolo, and the kids from [b:Lord of the Flies|7624|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327869409s/7624.jpg|2766512] would get eaten alive. South African schools are hardcore.
It's only when Baxter gets introduced into the supernatural world that surrounds him and is part of his heritage that things really get interesting for him. The unfamiliarity of South African mythology stories to most people reading this book is a real advantage here because the author puts something onto the table that goes way beyond the average vampire/werewolf/Norse Gods stories that overpopulate the urban fantasy landscape. There's a lot of seriously nasty monsters here, as well as a few much nicer creatures with which I am totally unfamiliar. There doesn't seem to be much African Science Fiction around at the moment so it's refreshingly different.
Baxter has to fulfil his destiny, save the girl and try not to get expelled from school, and he manages two out of the three by the end of the book. If I have any issue with this book, it's that it tries to cram too much into the story. For example, there's a pirate attack on the super-villains lair on a ship, as well as an assault on a secret military base, there's a battle between two mechanical creatures created thousands of years ago, that he and his main enemy have to control and which can cross time and the multiverse (which results in one version of Capetown being wiped out when they destroy a nuclear reactor), Baxter has some kind of spiritual connection to one of his ancestor's that keeps giving him visions at inconvenient moments, and there is even a "Normal Again" moment when Baxter's psychiatrist almost convinces him that the whole thing is in his head(and that's just a few of the things that happened, there's loads more). The author throws so much into the story that I wonder what he might have left for a sequel, and I sincerely hope that there is a sequel because I really enjoyed this book.
Baxter is not a particularly nice protagonist (something he readily admits) but he is a relateable one, and I would like to read more of his adventures.
In some respects this story reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer though instead of a female American teenager who is destined to be the Chosen One, here we have a male South African teenager instead. The "School is Hell" feel of Buffy comes out well here, though I suspect that even Buffy would struggle in a place like this, Alex and his Droogs would soon be crying into their Molokolo, and the kids from [b:Lord of the Flies|7624|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327869409s/7624.jpg|2766512] would get eaten alive. South African schools are hardcore.
It's only when Baxter gets introduced into the supernatural world that surrounds him and is part of his heritage that things really get interesting for him. The unfamiliarity of South African mythology stories to most people reading this book is a real advantage here because the author puts something onto the table that goes way beyond the average vampire/werewolf/Norse Gods stories that overpopulate the urban fantasy landscape. There's a lot of seriously nasty monsters here, as well as a few much nicer creatures with which I am totally unfamiliar. There doesn't seem to be much African Science Fiction around at the moment so it's refreshingly different.
Baxter has to fulfil his destiny, save the girl and try not to get expelled from school, and he manages two out of the three by the end of the book. If I have any issue with this book, it's that it tries to cram too much into the story. For example, there's a pirate attack on the super-villains lair on a ship, as well as an assault on a secret military base, there's a battle between two mechanical creatures created thousands of years ago, that he and his main enemy have to control and which can cross time and the multiverse (which results in one version of Capetown being wiped out when they destroy a nuclear reactor), Baxter has some kind of spiritual connection to one of his ancestor's that keeps giving him visions at inconvenient moments, and there is even a "Normal Again" moment when Baxter's psychiatrist almost convinces him that the whole thing is in his head
Spoiler
only it turns out that the psychiatrist is the main antagonist in disguiseBaxter is not a particularly nice protagonist (something he readily admits) but he is a relateable one, and I would like to read more of his adventures.