Michael Logan (1) (1970–)
Teoksen Apocalypse Cow tekijä
Katso täsmennyssivulta muut tekijät, joiden nimi on Michael Logan.
Tietoja tekijästä
Image credit: http://michaelloganbooks.com/about-michael-logan/
Sarjat
Tekijän teokset
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Syntymäaika
- 1970-11-03
- Sukupuoli
- male
- Kansalaisuus
- Scotland
UK - Syntymäpaikka
- Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK
- Lyhyt elämäkerta
- Michael Logan is an award-winning Scottish writer, whose career has taken him across the globe.
His debut novel, Apocalypse Cow, won the Terry Pratchett First Novel Prize. Since then, the sequel, World War Moo, and unrelated standalone novels, Wannabes and Hell’s Detective, have hit the shelves.
Michael’s short fiction has appeared in publications such as The Telegraph, Chapman and Underground Voices. He won Fish Publishing’s 2008 international One-Page Fiction Prize with We Will Go on Ahead and Wait for You—at 295 words, the most difficult thing he’s ever written.
During his time as a foreign correspondent, Michael lived in Scotland, France, Bosnia, Hungary, Switzerland and Kenya, which points to itches that can only be scratched by moving around. He has also reported from many other countries, including South Sudan, Somalia, South Africa, and other places that don’t begin with an ‘S’.
He currently lives in Rome, Italy and is married with three young children.
Michael likes books, fencing, guitars and cheese. This is not an exhaustive list, but it tells you pretty much everything you need to know.
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
Apocalypse Cow Tekijä: Michael Logan
So much fun. This story is an absurd spoof layer cake. The characters are somehow both caricatures and also fully realized in a way that I could understand and empathize while laughing at them. There is plenty of explicit blood and gore to supplement the silliness. I usually avoid zombie monster stories, but this one was a pleasure to read.
The premise of 'Apocalypse Cow' is inspired. A weaponised virus escapes from a government lab and turns cows and other animals into crazed carnivores.
The mechanics of the virus and its spread had been carefully thought through, as had the chaos that it would cause and the difficulty the army would have in containing the spread of the infection while dealing with large numbers of displaced people.
The structure of the story was also promising. Three initially separate storylines that eventually twist around each other, each one centring on an uninspiring hero: a journalist whose not very good at her job, a slaughterhouse work who is depressed by the killing that he does, and the much put-upon son of hippy parents whose commitment to veganism results in their son having to wear clothes made of hemp (which he is allergic to.
Yet, by the 70% mark, I abandoned the book rather than spend another two hours and forty minutes watching the plot unfold.
What was the problem? The humour, the pace and the people.
Humour's a funny thing. You get it or you don't. It works or it doesn't. For me, the humour in this book didn't work. Why? I didn't like that most of the humour was tainted either by cruelty or by a puerile sleaziness. For the most part, the situations and the reactions of the characters had a lot of potential for humour. I was reminded of the kind of situations that Tom Sharpe would set up. But time after time the humour slid from exploiting the potential of a chaotic situation to poking fun at the characters for their weaknesses or adding in little bits of sleaze that may have been meant to be titillating or ironic but which just seemed puerile to me.
The middle of the book, when the three storylines have become one, seemed to lose all forward motion. There was action. Bloody, violent action. Some of the main characters died in spectacular ways. But I felt that the story wasn't going anywhere.
I think this feeling of being stalled was added to because none of the characters felt real to me so, when they died, it didn't have anything like the impact it could have done. It was more like a piece being taken off the board than the death of a person. Even by the 70% point, I wasn't invested enough in the characters to care about what happened to any of them.
If the humour in this works for you then I'm sure you'd have a lot of fun and the pace and the shallowness of the characterisation would be easy to gloss over. But it's not for me.… (lisätietoja)
This was...wowzers. It was a very good sequel. I'm not sure how I feel about that ending, but I also do not think it could have ended any other way.
Note To Self: Write a better review after the readathon.
Updated Review (too many days later):
So this was a bit more serious that it's wackier predecessor. We are reunited with the survivors of Apocalypse Cow and are met with some new characters. Now the secret is out that the British Government created a biological weapon, and that they inadvertently let out of the laboratory. The virus, which was engineered for animals, has now mutated and made the jump to humans. There is an entire island of infected people trying to make the best of the life they've been cursed with. Meanwhile the rest of the world believes they have the right to make the decision about whether or not these infected people have the right to live. The fear is that the infection will eventually escape the island and infect the rest of the world. Both positions are understandable and even defensible.
Our heroes are thrust back into the thick of things. Geldolf learns that his mother was right to hide him from his grandfather, who is a greedy old man concerned only with profits and securing his legacy. When the man learns that his daughter is still alive on the island, he tasks his grandson with hiring a team of mercenaries to infiltrate Scotland and rescue her. Geldolf invites himself on the mission, Both to escape his grandfather and to see his mother again--not positive that the rescue mission will work.
There are a lot of shenanigans by both sides, threats and posturing and both secretly plan to destroy the other. The problem is that each side is only seeing things from their own viewpoint. In the end members from both sides seem to see reason, but will the powers that be agree? It's a bit of an open ending, which...meh. Based on how the plot played out, it makes perfect sense. It would have been hard to create a truly good ending choosing either side. However; there is also and opening for another sequel, without the absolute necessity for one. I enjoyed this very much, but am still not certain how I feel about the ending. I'll go with neutral.… (lisätietoja)
Note To Self: Write a better review after the readathon.
Updated Review (too many days later):
So this was a bit more serious that it's wackier predecessor. We are reunited with the survivors of Apocalypse Cow and are met with some new characters. Now the secret is out that the British Government created a biological weapon, and that they inadvertently let out of the laboratory. The virus, which was engineered for animals, has now mutated and made the jump to humans. There is an entire island of infected people trying to make the best of the life they've been cursed with. Meanwhile the rest of the world believes they have the right to make the decision about whether or not these infected people have the right to live. The fear is that the infection will eventually escape the island and infect the rest of the world. Both positions are understandable and even defensible.
Our heroes are thrust back into the thick of things. Geldolf learns that his mother was right to hide him from his grandfather, who is a greedy old man concerned only with profits and securing his legacy. When the man learns that his daughter is still alive on the island, he tasks his grandson with hiring a team of mercenaries to infiltrate Scotland and rescue her. Geldolf invites himself on the mission, Both to escape his grandfather and to see his mother again--not positive that the rescue mission will work.
There are a lot of shenanigans by both sides, threats and posturing and both secretly plan to destroy the other. The problem is that each side is only seeing things from their own viewpoint. In the end members from both sides seem to see reason, but will the powers that be agree? It's a bit of an open ending, which...meh. Based on how the plot played out, it makes perfect sense. It would have been hard to create a truly good ending choosing either side. However; there is also and opening for another sequel, without the absolute necessity for one. I enjoyed this very much, but am still not certain how I feel about the ending. I'll go with neutral.… (lisätietoja)
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