Publishing Date: June 2019
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN:9780451492289
Genre: Post Apoc
Rating: 0.95/5
Publisher’s Description: It’s not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn’t look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.
Review: This should have been titled, “Stumpy Red Riding Fail” or “A Post Pandemic Virtue Signalling Guide”. The novel pretty much starts with the “Guns are bad” shtick. And I quote, “Red despised holding the gun….despised everything about it, hated how cold and hateful it felt in her hand.” Project much? I don’t know, it is hard for me to place a self-governing perspective on an inanimate object, but there you are.
The race baiting is off the charts and at one point I was thinking, “Just shut the fuk up already”. And I quote, “Red had that indeterminate mixed-race look that made white people nervous….”. Really? I don’t feel nervous around “mixed race” people. I thought they were just, people. I am mixed race, I don’t feel different towards anyone or assume that white people will turn on us all when the shjt hits the fan. Maybe since I don’t look mixed race I can blend in with all the evil WHITE rapey men. Well this racist author drags white people through the mud and elevates other non-white races in her little book of hate for most of the novel. And here I thought segregationists were dead.
Moving on, I found that the geographical certainty that you find in most post-apocalyptic novels was absent. This usually lends a sense of validity to the novel while giving the reader some visual context to go with the story line. What the author did was make it vague enough to expedite the novel without any grounding in fact. Easier to write that way.
And then there is the constant blather about Red’s amputee status, stump soreness and prosthetic. On and on and on. The author doesn’t even know enough to determine the exact name for Red’s particular condition (Transtibial amputee). The author seems like she wanted to paint Red as this smart (3.8 GPA), mixed race (Dad white, Mom Black- both University Professors) can-do survivor gal with all the odds stacked against her. She not only is an amputee trekking across the wilderness but constantly avoids all the people who want to rape her, because where would the story line go without the want of constantly raping?
Lastly, what is fairly obvious is that the author knows fuk all about survival. The questions are many with regard to uncovered aspects of Red’s overland trek. The depths are never plumbed and help, in the form of available food, is readily available as are the gifts of convenient cabins and homes appearing out of the woods, stocked with food and water. Throw in an amiable old prepper and, presto! What is also entirely unbelievable is her ability to take out grown WHITE men that have BAD guns or BIG knives with her little hatchet because she was taught a self-defense class in community college.
I liked when Red kept moving forward through the countryside as it helped ground her dipshjt personality (whiney and argumentative know-it-all). Then she suddenly kills three gun toting bad WHITE men with her little hatchet and back in the shjtter we go.
If you love your grandma, skip this.
Viking Jam 