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A review by cynicaltrilobite
The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson
4.0
Rest in Power Blumpers, the diabetic record store cat. You were a real one.
Man, what a bleak and also balls to the wall book. The Loop follows a teenage girl named Lucy, her best friend Bucket, and chill druggie Brewer as they try to survive a horrible brain altering experimental device which has been implanted in the bodies of several of their classmates. Those infected show awful homicidal tendencies and can only derive pleasure from inflicting as much pain and suffering onto others as possible. It doesn't go well for anyone involved.
I found all the characters to be really fun and enjoyable. Even the homicidal killers infected by the Oracle device were a treat when they were doing their thing. Johnson did a really good job at making us care about these characters before horribly killing them in front of us.
Speaking of, man oh man there are some absolutely gnarly violence and gore in this. Specifically, the tentacle tummy bit, the "we opened her like a flower" speech, the remains of Brewer's family, and the duct tape scalp *gag.* I've got a pretty high tolerance for fucked up stuff and even I was like "holy shit" for a lot of this.
I don't have many criticisms. One would be that I personally would have liked to see more POVs around town as things go to shit. You don't need to see much, but we are fully with Lucy for the whole ride, and I think it'd be interesting to see how others tried to fight against the murder hoards. I also maybe would have liked a hint of the outside world after the ending. Maybe a final episode of the conspiracy podcast we'd been hearing from. I do think, though, that it does kind of hint that all that effort was for naught and horrible octopus computers did indeed infest the world
As an aside, Steve, the scientist talking about their work on the Oracle, reminded me of that meme about "Every Resident Evil log be like..." It's like, hell yeah! Let's put the weird octopus smart chip in a bunch of random kids and then send them to school! That'll go well. Oh my God, the octopus computers are killing people! How could this have happened???
Man, what a bleak and also balls to the wall book. The Loop follows a teenage girl named Lucy, her best friend Bucket, and chill druggie Brewer as they try to survive a horrible brain altering experimental device which has been implanted in the bodies of several of their classmates. Those infected show awful homicidal tendencies and can only derive pleasure from inflicting as much pain and suffering onto others as possible. It doesn't go well for anyone involved.
I found all the characters to be really fun and enjoyable. Even the homicidal killers infected by the Oracle device were a treat when they were doing their thing. Johnson did a really good job at making us care about these characters before horribly killing them in front of us.
Speaking of, man oh man there are some absolutely gnarly violence and gore in this. Specifically, the tentacle tummy bit, the "we opened her like a flower" speech, the remains of Brewer's family, and the duct tape scalp *gag.* I've got a pretty high tolerance for fucked up stuff and even I was like "holy shit" for a lot of this.
I don't have many criticisms. One would be that I personally would have liked to see more POVs around town as things go to shit. You don't need to see much, but we are fully with Lucy for the whole ride, and I think it'd be interesting to see how others tried to fight against the murder hoards. I also maybe would have liked a hint of the outside world after the ending. Maybe a final episode of the conspiracy podcast we'd been hearing from. I do think, though, that it does kind of hint that all that effort was for naught and horrible octopus computers did indeed infest the world
As an aside, Steve, the scientist talking about their work on the Oracle, reminded me of that meme about "Every Resident Evil log be like..." It's like, hell yeah! Let's put the weird octopus smart chip in a bunch of random kids and then send them to school! That'll go well. Oh my God, the octopus computers are killing people! How could this have happened???