Here’s what makes zombies work for me. They are the perfect mixture of two of my favorite subgenres of fiction: horror and global catastrophe. There are bits and pieces of specifics, but that’s the lion’s share of the appeal, right there. The fact is, I get a childlike glee out of both the idea of an empty world and the idea of an unstoppable plague of the undead. One presumes that my actual reaction to such events would be, at the least, more sober and thoughtful. It remains to be seen!

The point of all that being that I’ve found a book that breaks with all previous reader conventions on my part. Xombies is the story of the end of the world at the hands of all women of childbearing age, who all at the same time became blue of skin and started to perform the function for which zombies are second-best known: killing everyone within the reach of their arms and replicating themselves. And it is the story of the aftermath, the struggle for survival of dozens of military men tasked with saving civilization and the hundreds of boys who managed to come along for the ride. And of course it is the story of our narrator, a seventeen year old girl who, thanks to a medical condition, is unable to menstruate and is therefore immune to the initial phase of the disease. (Nobody, of course, is immune to the methods by which it is spread.)

There are layers upon layers of depth to the story. The point that only menstruating women initiated the disease was not lost on me; neither was the bitter irony of the narrator’s surname being Pangloss. Inevitably, I skipped by many of the layers, because, English degree or not, I’m a pretty simple guy at heart, and I mostly wanted to see how the world ended and how our heroes survived it. I’d probably consider going back and reading it again sometime in the near future with an eye on plumbing the depths more fully, except, as I said, it broke my conventions for this genre.

At no point, from the first few chapters through the climax, was I filled with childlike glee at the end of the world. Instead, I was filled with the thick, choking oppression of an actual world’s ending. The sense of things winding down, of people losing purpose and hope hand-in-hand, of the inherently contradictory senselessness of the situation: all of these things accompanied me throughout the book. Having gotten an impression of what the end of the world would really feel like, I find that I prefer my childlike glee. So I probably won’t read it again anytime soon after all. It was good, but not spectacular enough to overcome the unpleasant feeling of reality.

I’m not sure what happened, here. I’d swear I waited longer than a month or so between the vampire porn this time. And yet, the evidence suggests I finished the last one no later than the beginning of August. Perhaps it’s some kind of compulsion. Because I know, I know I was going to wait longer, and then I thought I had. I’d still think I had, if the evidence wasn’t right in front of me. All I’m saying is, this can’t be a good sign.

Anyhow, I read Blue Moon. One thing good I can say for it is that the plot was vastly improved over the last one. Although aspects of it were a bit predictable, I definitely wanted to find out what was going on and how it would all end. Another thing I can say for it, which may as well be classified as good, is that it really lends itself in visuals to a comic format. Now, sure, I’ve been reading a lot of graphic novels lately, so I may bias in that direction. But I haven’t noticed it with any other books, plus the art style in my head does not match the art style in any of the graphic novels I’ve been reading. There may have been a third good thing. If I remember it, I’ll probably edit these lines out and replace them with the thing. But don’t hold your breath.

The plot, then, which I have deemed good: an unscrupulous and wealthy fellow is trying to acquire a piece of land for what will no doubt turn out to be nefarious reasons. Unfortunately for him, a post-grad research team is observing a tribe of peaceful trolls with sentient characteristics that live on the land. Even more unfortunately for him, one of the post-grads is the werewolf ex-fiance of our perpetual necromantic heroine, Anita Blake. So when his tactics to remove the research team from the area (so he can dispose of the land as he sees fit) go beyond the ‘Pretty Please’ phase, he’ll no doubt discover what a mistake it was to mess with anyone that Anita feels a tie to.

As for the bad stuff, well, it was basically everything that occurs in and around the plot but isn’t directly related to it. For one thing, there is no more porn bloat. This is actual porn. Sure, Ms. Blake has the excuse of a vengeful spirit inhabiting some portion of her psyche for actively seeking a hard lay from anyone close to her (including, in one memorable event, an entire werewolf pack). But that only excuses her. The book, on the other hand, has none. Along the same track but even worse, through her ignorance, the audience is provided with exposition illuminating BDSM terminology. I really fear for what will happen in the next book, since there was no payoff in this one. (I mean, people can live their lives as they wish, and I don’t judge, nor do I confirm or deny my own opinion on the topic. All I’m saying is, it does not make for compelling literature.) And we’re informed that Jean-Claude (the main vampire of the series) gains power through the sexual pleasure of people around him. (No payoff and correspondingly more fear for the future on this one, too.) Worst of all, though, Anita has graduated to full-blown Mary Sue status.

You know, I say that’s what’s worst of all, but it isn’t. If it was just the necromancy stuff, I could see it as growing powers where each step along the series made logical sense. But the werewolf stuff, in addition to appearing without much logic involved, doesn’t really add anything to the stories that’s at all necessary. This book could drop about a hundred pages to be as long as the first one in the series, and it would be much better as a result. So the worst part isn’t the Mary Sue thing, it’s that there’d still be a story without it, and not only that, a fairly good one. Instead, Anita seems to live in a consequence-free world where her biggest problem is whether one or the other of her boyfriends will be jealous when she has sex with someone other than him. She can stop anyone around her from dying, kill anyone in her way, and nobody seems to mind or expect much different.

And yet, God help me, we all know I’ll have read the next one by November at the latest. What is wrong with me?

Ironic that after my complaints about the editing of Nuklear Age, the next book I should read (well, sort of next) would be an advance uncorrected proof. (Also ironic that despite being “advance”, it’s actually for a book that’s two years old.) Most ironic of all, though, is how very few incorrect edits were present in Homeward Bound, the (as far as I know) last book in Turtledove’s alternate history series where aliens attacked the Earth just as World War II was picking up steam. How very few when compared to the purportedly completed and publishable Nuklear Age, that is.

But enough about that unpleasantness. There’s plenty enough unpleasantness to be had here. Which is odd, because I was looking forward to the book, and throughout it I was eager to know what was going to happen. It’s not like I can say that there was no ultimate resolution in the ongoing cultural (and sometimes military) struggle between humans and the Race. I mean, there wasn’t, but in the acceptable ‘I’ve shown you enough that you can draw your own conclusions’ sense. The same is true for many of the individual character story arcs. So you’d think I’d be happy.

I guess my complaints are all about the execution. There’s a fairly large spoiler on the inside cover that meant my perceptions of the first part of the book were colored by waiting for the other shoe to drop. Since it didn’t until three-quarters through (which is what makes me call it a large spoiler instead of a small one), it seemed like I was killing time waiting for the climax. But then, after the big event, it seemed like I was killing time waiting for the fallout to become apparent. Since it did become apparent but only over an accumulation of data, I’m willing to call that my own fault for being impatient.

Even leaving aside my pacing complaints, though, there were still other issues. There weren’t enough character viewpoints to spread the story around, although I think that ties into pacing too. I came back to characters so quickly (relative to Turtledove’s same formula in his other books I’ve read) that I expected more to have happened by the time I got back. But it wasn’t really a Things Happen kind of book, so much as an exploration of the culture clash between two alien species. Which is also not what I was expecting.

Another unexpected thing is how I keep forgiving the book and blaming myself for its shortcomings. So, I’ll close on a note that I know wasn’t my bad. Among the aliens, there’s a fairly amusing Colombo rip-off who’s trying to get to the bottom of an illicit drug trade. Except for the amusingness, the subplot went absolutely nowhere and seemed to have no consequences for any individual character nor for the story as a whole. The amusing part would have been enough to forgive that if it had only appeared once and faded back, but it was still an issue through the penultimate chapter of the book, and then, nothing. So, that’s lame. And the pacing problems were too, even if they were directly caused by my expectations. Because books should entertain me correctly, dammit.

I’ll certainly keep reading Turtledove, as I have no reason to expect this to be a new direction for everything he writes. But I’m glad this was the last of this series, because I’m not sure I’d read the next one, if there were going to be more. And now I don’t have to wonder what I’m missing or (more likely) cave and read it anyway, despite expecting not to enjoy myself. So you see.

If I had to guess, I’d say the failure of the book is that it was an alternate future, which is to say science fiction. What makes him so good at alternate history is his understanding of actual history. In this case, he had to wing it, and that’s probably what kept the story so static compared to the other ones, where he knew what had to happen next simply because it would make the most historical sense.

Or maybe it mostly was just me after all. But probably it’s the other thing.