It's Not the End of the World
Parks-Ramage takes the idea of a wealthy, sometimes frivolous main character getting ready for a party and dials it up to 11. But then, in an ambitious move that brings a delightful element of camp to the novel, he abandons that relatively safe and simple premise in favor of an exercise in maximalism. Which is to say that his plot goes off the rails—and it works ... Parks-Ramage delights in the gory details, the intestines and missing flesh and dangling jawbones ... If you’ve seen Sinners, and enjoyed the campiness of its vampires, you’ll have fun with the not-technically-but-functionally zombies Parks-Ramage deploys in this section of the book ... Sometimes you have to laugh so you won’t cry — and as is usually the case with camp, there is something true and painful running beneath the humor. It’s a good reminder that, no matter how awful or hopeless things get, we can still imagine dragons.
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Too many storylines unnecessarily muddy this commentary on near-future America ... Parks-Ramage bites off more than he can chew while failing to imbue his satire with clarity. The book spans more than 100 years and takes aim at a future many fear is on its way without providing his characters, who fight for a better world, with enough dimensionality to bring it to life.
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Bracing if lurid .... The author peppers the nightmarish narrative with plenty of inspired ideas, such as an apocalypse-themed vacation retreat modeled after Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and he shines in his depiction of the makeshift family’s love for each other, which is expressed in the increasingly extreme lengths they go to in protecting one another. Unfortunately, the narrative often loses its way in scenes of gratuitous violence and pornographic sex. It’s a mixed bag.
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