I can't possibly overstate how much I hate the original cover of this book:
I mean it is horrifying. I can't create anything visual worth a damn, but even I feel superior to this. I would never have read this if that was the cover.
Thankfully they changed it up (see below) and I dug in and just LOVED the story! I just bought the second volume for my kindle. I don't BUY books, but I needed it. I must know if Carl and Donut, and freaking Mongo, survive.
Okay, the aliens who seeded the earth with humans millennia ago have come back to strip the planet of resources. At the same time, they are airing the most popular reality show in the universe from the dungeons where they have corralled the survivors.
Carl was trying to rescue his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend's cat when all the structures on Earth disintegrated along with all their inhabitants. So as a survivor, clad only in his tighty-whiteys and the s-t-b-e-girlfriend's pink crocs, he and Donut headed for shelter. And the carnage began.
I really don't like violence in books or movies, but this is so cartoonish and weirdly detailed that it is not putting me off the book. But it is a lot. Nonetheless, I don't really mind if goblins heads get smashed or gerbil bosses get crushed beneath Carl's disturbingly bare feet. I don't like the evil Negan-ish crawlers who appear to be hunting Carl as they murder other crawlers, but I try to gloss over those parts.
The killing is probably what many readers are here for, but I love the interpersonal stuff. (This is why I always leave Marvel movies 30 minutes before the end when the Grand Guignol begins.) The relationship between Carl and Donut is delightful - as if Charlie Brown and Lucy were a grown man and a cat, but also Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard without the bland sexual chemistry. My favorite human-centered storyline is the group of elderly people from the Meadow Lark Elder Care Facility and the staff that gently cares for them (unless they pee in the corridors) even to their own detriment.
This book doesn't stop moving and I didn't stop laughing.
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