Monday 27 May 2013

Day Six: Apocalypse Cow

Day Six, Beautiful Reader! We're almost there!

So, I thought seeing as this week of bloggery seems to have developed a bit of an animal theme, that today I would combine my love of our mammalian cousins, with my love of the undead and review Apocalypse Cow, by Michael Logan.

The plot involves an unlikely group attempting to smuggle the truth out of Britain when an epidemic of zombiism (that's totally a word, right?) starts spreading through the four-legged population of the country. There's sneezing, hungry, randy animals all over the place, and an evil government agent trying to kill them, and if that wasn't enough, they are a ragtag bunch of losers.

It's a funny story, definitely going for the splatterpunk end of the genre, which I love in films, but I'm not sure works quite so well on the page.It's a really visual book, but the description of cows in an abattoir coming back to life and going on a rampage would probably be more effective on the screen.

Having said that, I did come to care about the characters and wanted them to have happy endings all round.

Apocalypse Cow was joint winner of the inaugural Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now Prize, so it may be that the vast majority of people will absolutely love it, but I thought this book was lacking a certain x factor.

Maybe the problem is that I really wanted it to be amazing, and instead it was just good.

So, give it a try, but don't expect too much.

I'm giving it six and a half skulls out of ten.

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