In the Jam

So Yatzhee Croshaw came back with another book. About an apocalypse. Involving Jam. (It's interesting in that all the peoples call it jam, although that's never an official name.)

Travis wakes up one morning and finds the city of Brisbane covered in jam. Jam that eats anything organic. And so begin the trials of him and his (to use the term loosely) "friends", as they try to cross the city (the biggest game of "the floor is lava" already), and survive encountering other groups of survivors. And yes, I know there should be a comma there, but there isn't... because that's more appropriate.

Because it seems that everyone who survives is an idiot. I'm not sure what Yatzhee is saying here about people, but I certainly got the sense that all these people only are surviving because of narrative convenience. And this extends the most to Travis, the person who conveniently manages to be present at all the plot relevant moments and find out all the things that the readers need to know. Yes, readers need to know, but I was having trouble accepting that Travis just so happened to be in the right place at the right time. And this ties in with his complete lack of personality (outside of caring about Mary). This is pointed out by other characters, which is merely hanging a lamp shade on it, and is useful for making him go alone with everyone else to find out what they are doing, but it does distance us from caring about him when he is just observing everyone else. As indicated above, when he is actively doing something, mostly involving Mary, then he is more interesting.

Anyway, have you read Mogworld, yet? This continues with one of the characters turning up here, and certainly continues that rather off-the-wall humour, so go ahead and pick up Jam as well.

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