Kinda disappointed by this. I think part of the problem is that I got really hyped for this book and expected some great stuff from it. The premise is absolutely phenomenal, the kind of thing that makes you slap your head and go, "Why hasn't someone done that before???" But before I harp on more of the negatives, let me talk about what I like.

Again, that premise is excellent.

The scenes of our main characters pushing their way through walls and walls of rotten meat are visceral in the worst possible way. They are, at times, waist deep in fecal matter and parasites with Mellick painting a horrid picture of the insides of this dead behemoth.

All of the scenes that take place in the past are excellent in analyzing that horror of a disaster that is absolutely coming for you, but just hasn't reached you yet. Kind of reminded me of the early COVID days.

I really love the exploration of hormones of the creature becoming a street drug that the quarantined people of Portland slowly get hooked on. I also love how it ends up coming back around to the felled monster.

Now, my negatives.

I don't like the characters. If they're not rude and off-putting, they tend to be one-note. The exception to this is our main character, but even he suffers from this lack of definition at times.

I wanted MORE. I'd heard so much about Mellick's insane wild style of writing and was ready to strap myself in for a truly visceral and mind bending look into just how a giant kaiju is broken down piece by piece. That is not the story that is told here. We follow the very very shitty day had by a certain crew tasked with grinding up the organs of the great beast. I still think this more focused idea could have worked, but most everything goes by so quickly that it's sometimes hard to really get steeped in the horror or revulsion of a certain situation. I feel that the premise could have easily been drawn out another 150 pages or so.

Mellick tended to use a lot of telling over showing, especially when it came to characters expressing thoughts/emotions. There's nothing grammatically wrong with it, but it contributes to the somewhat two-dimensional feel of some of the characters. Key example, the older guy's freak out when he sees a car he thinks he recognizes.

I'm really not a fan of that ending. It just feels like kind of a sad whimper to cap off the end of an otherwise wild trek through the decaying body of a kaiju.

All in all, The Big Meat isn't a bad book by any means, and I don't regret reading it in the slightest. It was maybe just a bit too pulpy for my tastes and can serve as an excellent lesson in tempering ones expectations.