Interrupting Soliloquy

I wish I didn't feel so "eh" about this book, but I think that's a pretty fair way of stating it, because it kind of puttered listlessly to an end in the same way that I'm puttering listlessly in this textbox. I'm not unfamiliar with the idea of populating a story with irritating or stupid characters to input humor (see: Arrested Development, Fawlty Towers, even Hitchhiker's Guide), but the personality flaws for the characters didn't create charm, they just read like "some people" with a few gimmicks. Which is actually surprising to come out of Yahtzee, considering his perpetual dislike of the common masses and considers them rather dull things to base a story on, and yet here he's done exactly that. Hmm.

Though there's nothing in this book that's flagrantly bad, and honestly I would give it a read through, because it's got an interesting premise and the two different settlements are rather funny, but it's just not a book that manages to make you like the characters in any way, shape, or form and want to see them out to the end. It's really more about the apocalypse than the people in it, and the people in it go onnnn.

Which may be the basis for why eventually I felt like the book couldn't seem to figure out an ending. It was like as though Yahtzee cottoned on right as the end was coming that these characters were acting stupid for the sake of acting stupid, dropping into constant happenstance, not through any particular idiotic thinking but for idiotic thinking that might make sense and been vital to the plot but in the end just... didn't. I did like the confrontation of Tim and Travis, but otherwise the jam was to Travis as Bioshock was to Jack. The story of the world and not the character, except in this Bioshock you don't really care about Andrew Ryan or Fontaine or anyone. They don't evoke any emotion other than irritation and occasionally a laugh. Maybe the focus on the settings is why the endings of both rather suck, because you don't particularly care about a conclusion for the main character.

I would read it at least once. It is rather funny before it peters off.