read: Robopocalypse: A Novel (3 stars)

Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book, but found it frustrating. While it tried for the same collected eyewitness style that Max Brooks used for World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, I didn't buy that indulgence for very long. But all of the accounts sound the same. And many use vocabulary and diction that I felt to be beyond the purported author/speaker. Many of the chapters are labeled as being assembled from video footage and communication logs from various devices. Yet these are still delivered in the same first-person voice as the other chapters. All-in-all, the framing device felt convoluted and tacked on.

On the other hand, the concept and the storytelling within the chapters was quite captivating and thought-provoking. Most of the prose was easy to read, even though it could have been easily overwhelmed by technical babble. There were even hints of character development that could have been quite compelling in the hands of a more mature fiction author.

With a different approach and more editing, this book could have easily gotten four stars. As it is, I can only give it three.

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