sarahetc's reviews
1168 reviews

This was crazy-good, ultra-sick scifi horror and I couldn't put it down. I'm really looking forward to the sequel. I read a lot about the "cliche" ending, so I was ready to be disappointed, but I still got a kick out of it. Good storytelling, compelling characters, and a unique, in-your-face voice.

Little Boy Blue is one badass mofo, y'all. This volume in the continuing story was violent and sad. I missed the humor of earlier volumes, but it was still really well told. And it's nice to see some of the secondary characters come to the fore. Beast was heretofore uninteresting, but now I'd like to know more about him.

This was breathtaking. Literally, there were sections where I had to close the book and catch my breath. The prose is so beautiful that, coupled with the subject matter, it was sometimes a very physical experience to read the book. My heart pounded, my breath came faster, and there were times when I wanted to cry. I've read a great deal of non-fiction on the idea of atomic weapons and nuclear holocaust and none of them had anywhere near the power of this novel.

I was thinking about how to describe Ted Dekker's joint. I came up with Tom Clancy + Nicolas Sparks + Your Sunday School Teacher = Ted Dekker. So, you know, adventure, Jesus, romance. Predictable. Not great, but a good enough time.

I know I'm supposed to mark this "It was amazing!" because it's won the Pulitzer and many other prizes, but frankly, I forced myself through it. I'm sure that, were I in a different frame of mind (although I don't know what frame that would be), I'd find this amazing and mind-boggling and truly commentative about life and society. Mostly it was just morose. McCarthy's nonstop sentence fragments were jarring. I see stylistically how that works, but I found myself rewriting everything as I went along to make the narrative flow. McCarthy pulled no punches and I can appreciate that, even though it made me want to puke and die at times. I can't recommend it, but if you're interested in depressing dystopic tragedy, get on it.