johnny dangerously. reviewed And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin
Review of 'And Then I Woke Up' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I like zombie fiction, I like it a lot. I like the narrative of survival, I like the tense situations, I like the potential for worldbuilding and the way it can put character development at the forefront. But zombie fiction, like most post apocalyptic fiction, is inherently conservative, falling victim to a 'come and take it' ideology that prioritizes hoarding, us-vs-them tribalism, and a particularly Evangelical flavor of paranoia about the future. It's the end times, after all, and in the Christian West, an event that has not ever happened, no matter how many times it's been predicted, is something that feeds into the constant background static of our culture and policy decisions.
But I still want to read zombie books and watch zombie shows and play zombie games. It's fun.
This novella is fun. This novella is about zombies. This novella is also what we think about when we …
I like zombie fiction, I like it a lot. I like the narrative of survival, I like the tense situations, I like the potential for worldbuilding and the way it can put character development at the forefront. But zombie fiction, like most post apocalyptic fiction, is inherently conservative, falling victim to a 'come and take it' ideology that prioritizes hoarding, us-vs-them tribalism, and a particularly Evangelical flavor of paranoia about the future. It's the end times, after all, and in the Christian West, an event that has not ever happened, no matter how many times it's been predicted, is something that feeds into the constant background static of our culture and policy decisions.
But I still want to read zombie books and watch zombie shows and play zombie games. It's fun.
This novella is fun. This novella is about zombies. This novella is also what we think about when we think about zombies-- and the end times-- and how we cast ourselves as characters within a grand narrative of apocalypse. This story is also very, very concerned with the post-truth era, the Trump administration, Brexit and fake news. All swirl together into a complex and bittersweet story of... zombies. And survival. And the truth. And what it means when we interact with any of those things, and how, if we touch one, we're almost always touching one of the others.
