Grasshopper Jungle, by Andrew Smith

On the front cover of my copy of Grasshopper Jungle, there’s a quote from Michael Grant, which calls it: “A cool/passionate, gay/straight, male/female, absurd/real, funny/moving, past/present, breezy/profound masterpiece of a book.” This sums up Andrew Smith’s work of genius absolutely perfectly.

Grasshopper Jungle is everything Michael Grant says it is, which might sound like a pretty tough thing to achieve, yet Andrew Smith does this without seeming to break into a sweat. Our protagonist Austin, however, probably sweats quite a lot. What with the unleashing of the end of the world and the running for his life, not to mention the heartache of being in love with two people at once.

It all begins in the small American town of Ealing, Iowa. One question is whether it began fifty years ago, or whether it began four days ago. Either way, an army of six foot tall praying mantises have been accidentally unleashed into the town. Right now, though, nobody really knows anything about it. But the grasshoppers don't care; they only want to do two things: they’re hungry and they’re horny. Which is, when you think about it, maybe kinda like the average teenage boy?

Grasshopper Jungle is not so much an apocalypse book as a coming-of-age story, because it’s Austin’s story - his and Robby’s and Shann’s – so even while the shit is hitting the fan around them, Austin is still, you know, a person. With personal stuff going on. More precisely, he’s wondering how he can be in love with both Robby and Shann at the same time. He doesn’t want to hurt either of them, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is an unstoppable dynamo of a horny sixteen year old boy, slave to his instincts, and this makes him selfish. So it’s kind of inevitable that he’ll hurt someone, and probably himself too, as he tries to figure it all out. Oh, and try to save the world.

I spent about 90% of the book debating how literally I should take Austin’s account of “the end of the world”. Is it really the end of the world as in The End Of The World, or is it (a) just the end of the world in Ealing, Iowa, (b) what could have been the beginning of the end of the world but fortunately turns out not to be, or (c) maybe simply, given his heartache, just the end of Austin’s world? In many ways Austin’s account of what could be the more terrifying aspects of this story are almost blasé and almost (almost) so taken-for-granted that it’s difficult to divine how serious it all is. Is this because by the time he comes to write this account, he’s pretty much inured to the whole thing? Or because, at the time it’s all happening, it’s overshadowed by the bigger question in his life: how can he be in love with two people? Plus, you know, giant grasshoppers.

Is Austin to blame? The Hoover boys? Dr. Grady McKeon? The world’s need for unstoppable corn? Told not as a diary, but as a personal historical account, Austin likes details and he likes connections, and his history includes both of these, linking together what could be considered unrelated events into a big spider’s web of a retelling. Ultimately, of course, all the connections become clear, but can there be a happy ending. What, after all, is a happy ending? It’s immense and tiny, intense and careful, pacey and thoughtful, funny and sad, and it’s impossible not to root for Austin to get everything he wants, even when all of those things are seemingly contradictory to one another.

I loved every part of this book, from Austin’s complete confusion over his two best friends to the frankly rather bizarre apocalypse he’s caught up in the middle of, the brilliant antics of these three kids in their small hometown and the eclectic way that Smith/Austin goes about writing the story, sliding from personal account to family history to multiple viewpoints as the praying mantises take over. I want to tell you it’s one of the most interesting and unusual novels I’ve ever read. I want to tell you it’s genre busting, and gender busting too. I want to tell you it will appeal to fans of John Green, Patrick Ness, Michael Grant, Suzanne Collins, Stephen King. Mostly, though, I just want to tell you it’s so completely brilliant you have to read it for yourself.

The 5th Wave, by Rick Yancey

For anyone looking for a great adventure/thriller – perhaps to replace that hole left by The Hunger Games – then look no further than The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. It seems a bit cliché to describe it as gripping or edge-of-the-seat, but that is exactly what this book delivers. It’s a little bit sci-fi, a little bit horror, a little bit post-apocalyptic, but mostly it’s just about a family trying to survive, trying to figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

Cassie’s world has been destroyed. Four waves of terror spread across the world when the aliens came. First the lights went out. Then tsunamis spread across the land. The third wave was pestilence, the fourth the silencers. What will the fifth wave be and when will it come? Separated from her family, Cassie is living day by day, living by the principal of trust no-one. Which seems pretty sensible, except that sometimes you have to decide to put your faith in someone, sometimes you need that someone to help you survive. But is Evan the right someone for Cassie to trust? He saved her life, but is he telling her everything? Can he help her find her little brother?

Rick Yancey’s telling of The 5th Wave is done in such a way to make you 95% certain that you know what’s going on, who to trust, who to doubt, and right from the very beginning we know what the 5th wave will be, even if Cassie doesn't. And yet that 5% somehow takes on a disproportionate weight, making us question what we believe to be true, to want to shout out at Cassie and warn her whilst also making us want to believe the opposite. And thus, tension abounds, the heart races, and you just have to simply keep turning the page, and the next page and the next page and the next page.

Ironically, Cassie has never met an alien; as far as she knows they’ve never set foot on the planet, never shown their faces. Instead they wreak their havoc from above, watching, waiting, playing. This makes it seem so much more about humanity, about how we respond to apocalyptic situations, how we choose to treat each other, how we find safety or how we gang up against one another; what we’re willing to sacrifice. This is a story that has been told time and time again, yet Yancey imbues it with a fresh sense of adventure and trauma and tension. And, given as this is a concept that has been told time and time again, what does that say about our enduring fascination with the real subject matter: ourselves?

Whether you’re a fan of The Walking Dead, The Passage, I Am Number Four, The Host, or none of the above, read The 5th Wave. Whether you’re young or old, or even older, read The 5th Wave. It’s brilliant.

MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood

The simply-worded opening pages of MaddAddam form the perfect introduction to this crazy world (or not so crazy?) that Margaret Atwood first introduced us to ten years ago in Oryx and Crake. 'The Story of the Egg' recounts how the Crakers were born in the Egg, brought to life by Oryx and Crake, surrounded by the Chaos until Crake washed the Chaos away, and perfectly encapsulates the essence of the Crakers and of the storyteller, Toby. The Crakers' history, their penchant for singing and praise, and their idealised view of the world is laid out alongside Toby’s frustration with the Crakers’ quirks and yet simultaneous desire to maintain their innocent view of the world.

Simultaneously bringing the reader up to speed with previous events whilst giving us a taste of where the story is going to go - the Crakers’ world and the Crakers’ worldview - even if you haven't read any of the series before you'll surely be hooked, wanting to find out what it all means and what on earth the author is thinking. MaddAddam is everything I expected and hoped it would be - the continuation of this strange, potential future world that in some ways is a warning alarm for our own suspect future, whilst also being a proper kick-ass read and a thought-provoking piece of speculative fiction from one of the masters of the genre.

Unlike The Year of the Flood, the 'sisterbook' which ran alongside Oryx and Crake, detailing the same world and the same timeframe, but with mostly different characters, MaddAddam ties the two together, the stories from the first two books converging here into a single narrative; like two forks in the road becoming one path. Although, actually, to describe MaddAddam as having a single narrative would be entirely wrong. Rather, it is a collection of stories and perspectives and pieces of the jigsaw:

Toby continues the narrative in present time, keeping us apprised of the events going on in and around the new MaddAddam compound, where, a little less than a year on from the Waterless Flood, the survivors have converged – a mixture of God’s Gardener’s, MaddAddamites, Crakers, and Snowman-the-Jimmy. Woven into this timeline is Zeb’s story, the man whom Toby loved from afar in The Year of the Flood, and as he tells his history, we begin to see how intimately linked it is with everything that has happened so far. And then there are the stories the Crakers persuade Toby to tell them each evening - they want to know the histories too, how Zeb ate a bear, of Zeb’s birth, of Zeb and the Snake Women. And so we hear the ‘real’ version, or Zeb’s version, and then the simplified version that Toby tells the Crakers.

Through Toby's narrative we see how this band of survivors are trying to make a new life, to find food, to protect themselves in the aftermath of the Waterless Flood. Alliances and dalliances are formed, jealousies diverted, human assumptions are challenged. But fears are ever-present: fear for the future, fear of the Painballers, the roaming Pigoons, and whatever else might be lurking outside the compound they’ve set up home in. And Zeb is sure that Adam is still alive, but can he find him?

The backbone of MaddAddam, though, are the Craker stories; there is the distinct sense that, continuing on from where Snowman-the-Jimmy began in Oryx and Crake, Toby is creating a mythology for the Crakers, something they will hold onto and repeat through the generations. But myths, of course, twist and turn the truth, building gods and heroes out of ordinary people, creating explanations for un-understandable events – if these are the tales that will be passed into the future, then the kernels of truth from which they began will be lost as Crake and Oryx, Zeb and Toby and Jimmy become new beings, beings to be semi-worshipped rather than beings whose actions are, by Toby’s standards and by ours, questionable, morally debatable and, sometimes, fearsome. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

And for every new thing that Toby tells the Crakers, every new thing she introduces them to or tries to explain to them, is she changing who they are and who they will become? Is she removing their innocence? Would it be better to leave them uninfluenced? It's just one of Toby's many worries, and a relevant one, but in the end it’s perhaps irrelevant because from the moment, at the beginning of MaddAddam, that the Crakers and the humans begin to properly interact with one another, the Craker evolution is inevitably set on a new path.

I would have liked there to have been a bit more about Adam and the beginning of MaddAddam and the God’s Gardeners, as I don't feel completely aquainted with the history of this part of the story - but in the long run perhaps these inner details aren’t relevant, or aren’t relevant to the formation of the Craker mythology, on which MaddAddam is focused. Or perhaps if I re-read Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood again, the pieces will be filled in for me there. What I especially enjoyed, though, was the way in which Atwood challenged our human assumptions about certain aspects of this new world and how, gradually, the Crakers, instead of relying on Snowman or Toby,  begin to take over the formation of their stories for themselves. Towards the end of the book we see 'The Story of The Battle' and 'The Story of Toby' only through Craker eyes, a subtle reflection of the new world order as it gradually comes about.

I could have gone right back to the beginning and started reading MaddAddam all over again as soon as I finished it. But what I want to do even more now is go to the very beginning, back to Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood and read all three parts of the trilogy again, to see how all the dots connect up, how the threads of all the different stories and characters weave and warp together. MaddAddam is a wonderful conclusion to this immense and foresightful story. It is full of human drama, human weakness, and human strength. By turns humorous and poignant, I can't for all my friends to read it as well so that we can gather round and 'discuss'...

Monument 14, by Emmy Laybourne

Monument 14 is an absolutely brilliant new offering for any readers who love to be kept on the edge of their seat.

Monument 14 has everything a good apocalypse novel needs: tension, human frailty and human interaction, a disaster or five, and plenty of cliff-hangers. There is blood and bodies, people to trust, people to fear, and people with questionable motives. There are boys with crushes on girls and girls with crushes on boys, and there is the question: who will live and who will die?

When a freak hailstorm hits the town of Monument one morning during Dean’s bus ride to school, he and the other kids on board are forced to take refuge in the local supermarket. It’s a chaotic and dramatic few moments, featuring a nasty crash, screaming, trauma, smoke and a heroic rescue. But this is only the beginning.

The following story covers a period of just twelve days, in which the group’s allegiances, survival skills and mental wellbeing are put to the test and pushed right to the edge. Because pretty soon it becomes clear that the hailstorm was not a one-off event, but one in a long line of disasters to hit the US on this September morning. Desperate as the children are to get home to their parents, when the riot doors of the supermarket come down, they find themselves trapped inside, a blessing in disguise as the world outside falls apart. Here, they have all they could possibly need: food, medicine, sleeping bags, you name it. But other people need it and want it too. Can they be trusted?

There are obvious similarities between Monument 14 and other apocalyptic stories of children cut off or separated from adults - Gone by Michael Grant, The Enemy by Charlie Higson, Ashes by Ilsa J Bick. Personally, I think this is the best of them all. It tackles similar issues, namely what happens to a group of children when left without parental supervision, how the big children must take responsibility for the littlies, power struggles, who to trust and who to fear, but two things really stand out in Monument 14. Firstly, the quality of the writing (I confess, I thought Gone was terribly written, and I think I’m one of perhaps only half a dozen people in the world who actually dislikes the enormously popular series) – but Emmy Laybourne’s storytelling is smooth and realistic, with no drag to the framing of situations or with her word choices, and she really kept me on the edge of my seat literally throughout the whole book.

Secondly, the series of events that take place to create the disaster the Monument 14 children witness are incredibly realistic. There are no mysterious domes, zombie-producing viruses, or weird unexplained supernatural explosions in this book, only natural disasters. One disaster triggers another, which triggers another, which causes a nasty, experimental chemical spill. The chemical is the only thing that could be argued against in my reasoning, but actually pretty similar things are created and played with by scientists today. And so this is what is really scary about Monument 14: IT COULD HAPPEN. It’s enough to give a person nightmares (ok, another confession: it did).

Scary, totally gripping, and really well executed. If only part two wasn’t a whole six months away.

Things We Didn't See Coming, by Steven Amsterdam

Things We Didn’t See Coming follows a nameless narrator as he navigates his way through the 21st century. It begins on the eve of the millenium, the narrator a nine-year-old boy torn between his father, who is panicking and paranoid about the Y2K bug, and his mother, who is trying to maintain a semblance of normality. Chapter by chapter, the story moves through the following thirty or so years, jumping about five years at a time, as he encounters an increasingly devastated world.

The overall feeling I took away with me after finishing Steven Amsterdam’s debut was one of bleakness. The chapters are peopled with floods and drought, plagues and cancer, medical advancements and societal deterioration. Nevertheless, the blurb on my copy describes it as mesmerising, and this is a description I would have to agree with. I had to keep reading to find out what was going to happen next - would he find peace and contentment? Would he be able to stop moving,? Would the world sort itself out? Would I ever learn the bigger picture?

Ultimately the bigger picture is not revealed. This is one man’s story and, as thus, it is highly biased toward his lone perspective. Consequently, there is never a clear outline of the state of the country or its government, or an explanation of why the narrator is caught up in these devastating events. Only the ‘how’ as he sees it is covered: its the way of the world he is living in, its impossible to escape, and he is simply trying to find the best way to survive. I can only assume the ‘why’ is that this is a world racked by climate change.

Even the ending is ambiguous and left open to interpretation. It’s strange that sometimes, when reviewing books that I didn’t massively enjoy, thinking about how they are put together, I find myself awed by the author’s approach, their technique and story building. Although I certainly didn’t dislike Things We Didn’t See Coming, it was so overwhelmingly bleak that I couldn’t really categorise it as an enjoyable reading experience. But: it is well written and is interesting and has made me think. From a writer’s perspective I find it has a lot of value.

This is a book that has been likened to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (which is, incidentally, incredible), and I can see the link: a desolate world with little to hope for. Yet somehow The Road leaves you with a feeling of hope, and the love between the man and his child is heartbreakingly beautiful and pure. Because these positive emotions are stronger, so the feelings of tension and danger and anticipation are stronger. Things We Didn’t See Coming doesn’t quite manage to strike the same line - even though the world still functions (in The Road it does not), it is more depressing. Our narrator seems permanently lonely and struggling, even when he has a partner. The only hope I have is that the other citizens of the narrator’s world have a more hopeful and love-filled tale to tell.

Things We Didn’t See Coming is certainly one to add to anyone’s wish-list of apocalyptic fiction. As someone who is fairly obsessed with this particular genre, as well an interest in environmental catastrophe, I am left thinking of a small speech the narrator’s father makes in the opening chapter. Although he is referring to Y2K, its a speech that, to me, resonates very strongly when put in the context of climate change: “This whole thing is symbolic, symbolic of a system that’s hopelessly shortsighted, a system that twenty, thirty years ago couldn’t imagine a time when we might be starting a new century. That’s how limited an animal we are... We are arrogant, stupid, we lack humility in the face of centuries and centuries of time before us... What we know now is that we didn’t think enough. We know we aren’t careful enough and that’s about all we know.” (pg. 22-23) Should we be afraid?