James Herbert (1) (1943–2013)

One start. One glorious, glittering star.

There are bad writers.
There are bad books.
We all know and fear them: shallow, inconsistent plot, flat writing, unrelatable characters, character development absent or unbelievable. Uff.
Then, once in a Pope's death, as they say in my town, one stumbles upon bad writing pushed to the limits of the sublime.
If there is a firmament of the awful novelists, this Herbert guy shines there, next constellation to Giorgio Faletti, in the same hemisphere with the best of the worst of Thomas Harris (I am thinking Hannibal, here. He must have been on something nasty while writing that one, thanks to God for the laughs).
Plot? At the service of the manly man, intent in saving Britain from fog, madness and unmanliness.
Character development? Who needs it? Our manly man needs not changing a iota of his musky self. Women around him, on the other hand, being helpless and evidently dim-witted cannot develop by God's decree, if not in the nature of their adoration for the manly one: submissively erotic while young and desirable, maternal as soon as they start, ahem, wilting. Then, and only then, are they allowed to become intellectually gifted.
Even the Government with its Secret Departments cannot but capitulate in front of such a critical mass of testosterone and entrust him, and only him, with saving the world. Because any civilian who happens to be the only survivor immune to the effects of the fog would be left free to come and go from a secret government facility and asked to risk his life, just him, to get a sample of the evil mist. And why wouldn't they, my friends, why wouldn't they.
Style? Who needs style, when we can have body horror aplenty, the triumph of TELL WHAT YOU WANT BUT JAYSUS, NEVER SHOW, and possibly the purplest, most off-putting sex scenes ever written? Also: a bunch of possessed schoolboys lynching an ecstatic gay teacher (because gay and pedophiles are one, in Herbert's Little Britain); lesbian sex imagined by a countryside provost, and remember that lesbians will regret their mistake; and an impressive mass suicide scene.
Absolutely advised, for All the Wrong Reasons!
I will leave here some gold nuggets as soon as I can get a copy back from the library.… (mere)

They killed all the rats susceptible to poison and pesticide and can you guess what's left? Right. The immune ones. Very smart idea.

But realistic, as we've done that a lot in history. We're foolish that way. We should probably be better about how often we do it. At least it's not bacteria becoming immune to medicine this time. Rats are scary, but our bodies attacking themselves or rotting is far scarier. Sorry, James, your book trilogy is just becoming a pretty cover and me rooting for the rats, not being afraid of them.

The amount of times they were described as "tenacious beasts" or "tenacious" was a bit on the tedious side. I get it, the rats are two foot long terrors.
They're so scary only the word tenacious can be used like Lovecraft saying "queer" for odd can be abused. Both James and Howard need to not repeat themselves like this. (R.I.P both of them)

They're also evolving into slugs basically. Two headed rats with pink skin crawling about feels less scary. Just gross. I'm here for horror, not nasty gross rat slugs. Why couldn't it be a terrifying rat king not a sluggish obese pink slug? Disappointing.

There's a few sex in the woods in a horror movie and then getting killed scenes. Instead of cringing at the sex, I felt like it was karma, especially when they knew the risks. All sex scenes are cringy to me even though I'm very sexually active. There's just something about them describing their breasts and talking about how good they're humping and all that that has always made me kind of disillusioned and unamused, there's very few exceptions to books that I do not like the sexual scenes of. It's nothing against this book because it could happen in any book even Stephen King's best books and I still would hate it. Especially when they're talking about their dongs and vaginas and abusing slang words or calling them things like the one-eyed snake and such.
So the rats were here basically to quell my annoyance at a sex scene breaking out in a horror book, that old trope.

Thank you, rats.

It's definitely a downgrade from the first book, but I also trilogy I never really expect the second book to be very good. It's a rule of my life to read the second book and find it less good than the first and to read the third book and it's either either the best book or the worst book. I have one more book to read of this series and I will be leaving in my review if it was the best of the worst.

I didn't really care for the characters in the first book because I expected them all to die, but I definitely felt like their deaths were more impactful in the first book. Here it's a bunch of characters that I don't care about, and I especially don't care about after listening to the first book because now I expect everyone from the first book to be dead. And with expectations like that, I don't really care about these characters because they probably won't make it to the third book.

3.8 stars. Rounded up to four stars.… (mere)

They're dropping nukes, it's the end of the road, hide in the bunkers - wait. Why are the bomb shelters filled with rats?

Aw hell, here we go again.

At least I'm leaning so far into the rats winning that I no longer really care about the humans. At this point let them win. They've earned it.

Also it's now I realize this is not a trilogy but a quadrilogy. I expected this to be the end, but alas, it is not. I'm not sure how it can keep going from here. I guess I'll have to find out.… (mere)