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Day: March 12, 2009

Review: "Bloody Crazy" does not rhyme with Satan

Published by NiteMayr on March 12, 2009

Blood Crazy

Nick Aten ambles over the bloody remains of a boy evicerated by his own mother to eat a burger and shoot the shit with a friend. The next day his younger brother is dead and the adults have taken up the hobby of killing everyone under the age of 20, all adults everywhere. Now Nick has to get away from it all and slip his parents as they hunt him across england.

Blood Crazy is a recounting by Nick Aten of the year that Adult humanity stopped caring for the youth and instead began turning the bodies of the young into massive necropolises and temples of death across the countryside.

Anywhere there were young people, the adults would gather and destroy them.

Nick spends a whole year on the run from place to place; finding his way from callow youth to something else.

Simon Clark does a fantastic job of making the story fast paced enough to keep you reading and 300 pages in I realized I’d read the majority of it in one go. Bravo I strongly recommend Blood Crazy!

My rating: 4.5 stars
****1/2

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I read this one quickly, I usally only read in small drips and have spent MONTHS not reading a DUNE novel, but I gave this book a minute while I was in disposed and could not stop reading it.  It’s not high literature; and once again we have a post-apocalyptic hero that can’t walk 20 yards without tripping over yet anothere willing woman who needs him to make love to her and plant his seed.  I wish that I was exaggerating this point.

The “cause” of the adults going crazy is explained; it’s a bit weak.  I don’t think it detracts from the book at all, but the explaination is weak.

This book does the oppostite of “Graceling” when it comes to travel, the travel portions are either mad dashes from blood-crazed adults or treks across wastelands that are leading urgently to somewhere; not detracting from the pace or the action.  It was a relief when a character found a safe place to sleep;  I cared that they got to sleep comfortably.

Nick Aten; the main character is somewhat stereotypical lead character.  He’s smart, but not an intellectual, strong, but not too tough.  Cocky but not cock-sure… I could go on.  He’s not so generic as to be an everyman, but he’s no stand-out.

The “Bully” character which serves as the human plot point for most of the story has a back story that I think that Simon Clark almost maliciously leaves off, going so far as to cut the character off when he attempts to vocalize his perceived injustice with Nick.   I was most frustrted with this; Tug Slatter is a bully and a thug, but he is certainly more than that and we are NOT given more than a glance at whatever motivates him and his misanthropy.

All in all; I will recommend this one to fans of Post-Apocalyptic survival novels.  It was a good quick read and worth picking up.