From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
This story was truly badly-written and I DNF'd it at a third of the way through because I had no idea what was happening and it was so far from the book description as to be completely misleading. The description promised that this guy Alex, transported to the future and the very apocalypse he wrote about in his best-selling graphic novel, comes back to the present time to try and stop the fated events, and no one believes him, but by one third the way through, he was still in the future, randomly (it seemed to me) moving around, with no purpose and no plan, and the people who were supposed to be educating him as to what was happening and how to stop it were offering no help at all.
On top of this, the future made no sense at all, because it was like the past. I know there had been some event (unspecified at a third in), which had set society back considerably, but though they spoke in modern lingo, they had weapons like it was the dark ages. I find it hard to believe, even in an apocalypse, that no one would have any guns at all. It made zero sense. There are guns galore all over the place and they would be freely available with all the ammunition you could want after an apocalypse. Swords, and bows and arrows on the other hand, are relatively rare, particularly swords, so where the hell did all that come from? Again, it made no sense.
The more I read of this, the more it seemed to me that the author hadn't really thought any of it through, and worse, it was written not like a novel, but like it was a clichéd manga or a cartoon strip which constantly kicked the reader out of suspension of disbelief. This was more like an unrealized idea than ever it was a novel.
The main character had got his graphic novel from information that this woman had put into his mind, and there was a sequel to the story, but the big question was: why had they given him the post-apocalyptic story and a sequel to that, neither of which helped him, instead of giving him the pre-apocalyptic story which would have actually helped him prevent it? Again, it made no sense. Alex was supposedly the author of this (or more accurately, the voice of it), yet he seemed completely lost in this world he (thought) he'd created, and he was utterly useless. That made no sense either.
I was psyched by the book description, but the novel itself seems like a different story to what was promised, and the writing is poor and very choppy. Some of the speech is in block caps for no apparent reason. This is like shouting, which is normally conveyed by telling the reader that someone shouted it, or by maybe putting the text in proper case. I didn't get the point of the block caps. This is not a comic book!
Often a speech was simply “HUGHGHGHGHGHG,” which I discovered, after a few of these, was meant to signify groaning or some sort of agonized vocalization. It was amateur and confusing. I honestly had zero interest in the story or any of the characters, and after that first third I felt I’d given it way more of a chance to engage me than it deserved. I can't commend it.
