The End of October
May 15, 2020 2:21 PM - by Wright, Lawrence - Subscribe
Dan Brown meets Coronavirus. There's a submarine, Mecca and nuclear tick-tock, lots of hazmat and goofily stereotypical characters, but the pacing is fine, there's some real drama, plus some probably-solid science, and of course the whole thing is oh-so-topical: eerily prescient, even.
It's escapist. Faintly ridiculous in the airport-thriller mode, though the ending is ... apocalyptic.
posted by chavenet at 1:15 AM on May 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by chavenet at 1:15 AM on May 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
I was spellbound for the first half but it kind of lost me after that. The writing is VERY Dan Brown-like but with worse pacing and some odd choices - he completely skips over at least two major emotional plot points - and there are some glaring editing mistakes. I don’t know if I’d have been into it were we not living through a pandemic.
That said - he accurately predicts so much of the way human society has responded to this pandemic that it almost made me feel comforted, somehow. Like, oh, this is just how we are, it’s not that our leaders are exponentially worse and people are exponentially stupider than at any other time in human history. I think it’s worth a read, especially right now when, you know, what else do many of us have to do?
posted by something something at 12:27 PM on May 16, 2020 [2 favorites]
That said - he accurately predicts so much of the way human society has responded to this pandemic that it almost made me feel comforted, somehow. Like, oh, this is just how we are, it’s not that our leaders are exponentially worse and people are exponentially stupider than at any other time in human history. I think it’s worth a read, especially right now when, you know, what else do many of us have to do?
posted by something something at 12:27 PM on May 16, 2020 [2 favorites]
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posted by filthy light thief at 4:33 PM on May 15, 2020