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Jam
We were prepared for an earthquake. We had a flood plan in place. We could even have dealt with zombies. Probably.
But no one expected the end to be quite so . . . sticky . . . or strawberry scented.
But no one expected the end to be quite so . . . sticky . . . or strawberry scented.
398 pages, Paperback
First published October 10, 2012
211 people are currently reading
3,004 people want to read
About the author
Yahtzee Croshaw
11Ìýbooks1,379ÌýfollowersBenjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw is an English comedic writer, video game journalist and author of adventure games created using Adventure Game Studio software. He writes articles for Australia's Hyper magazine, a major games publication. He uses his website "Fully Ramblomatic" as an outlet for his own work, including weekly dark humour articles, essays, fiction, and webcomics. He is currently making a series of video-reviews named Zero Punctuation for The Escapist, as well as the weekly column Extra Punctuation. In the February 2008 issue of PC Gamer (US), Croshaw took over Gary Whitta's "Backspace" column as a contributing editor. He is also one of the four founders of The Mana Bar; an Australian cocktail bar and video gaming lounge in Brisbane, Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 466 reviews
February 10, 2013
Like most people, I know Yahtzee primarily through his brilliantly scathing video game reviews.
Here's a link for the uninitiated:
When I found out that he'd written a book as well, I was curious. But honestly, I didn't have high expectations.
I don't mean this as a dig. It's just that brilliance is not necessarily transferable. Just because Yahtzee can be funny, clever, and witty in a five minute review, doesn't mean that he can write a funny, clever, witty novel. No more than I could jump in and do his job and be good at it.
All that aside, I was pleasantly surprised by the book. It was funny, well-written, and managed one of the most difficult tricks of all, which is to be ridiculous AND realistic.
In my experience, a lot of people who write speculative fiction (Sci-fi, fantasy, etc) tend to make the same mistake. They think that the more weirdness the better. They feel like if their stories only have one piece of speculation in them, they're somehow cheaping out.
It's as if people thing it's not enough to write an alternate history of Earth where, say, the Roman empire never collapsed. No. You have to change it so that everyone is talking Kangaroos with magic powers too.
But this simply isn't true. Most of the time, adding one simple "what if" to the story is more than enough. If I had the chance to teach a class on writing speculative fiction, I'd use this book as an example of how that's true.
The what if in question is, "What if you woke up and found that the world had been covered in two feet of carnivorous strawberry jam?"
Does it sound corny? Yeah.
But the truth is, it's a fucking good book. The best apocalypse stories I've read in ages.
So good on you, Yahtzee. You clever, multifarious bastard you....
Here's a link for the uninitiated:
When I found out that he'd written a book as well, I was curious. But honestly, I didn't have high expectations.
I don't mean this as a dig. It's just that brilliance is not necessarily transferable. Just because Yahtzee can be funny, clever, and witty in a five minute review, doesn't mean that he can write a funny, clever, witty novel. No more than I could jump in and do his job and be good at it.
All that aside, I was pleasantly surprised by the book. It was funny, well-written, and managed one of the most difficult tricks of all, which is to be ridiculous AND realistic.
In my experience, a lot of people who write speculative fiction (Sci-fi, fantasy, etc) tend to make the same mistake. They think that the more weirdness the better. They feel like if their stories only have one piece of speculation in them, they're somehow cheaping out.
It's as if people thing it's not enough to write an alternate history of Earth where, say, the Roman empire never collapsed. No. You have to change it so that everyone is talking Kangaroos with magic powers too.
But this simply isn't true. Most of the time, adding one simple "what if" to the story is more than enough. If I had the chance to teach a class on writing speculative fiction, I'd use this book as an example of how that's true.
The what if in question is, "What if you woke up and found that the world had been covered in two feet of carnivorous strawberry jam?"
Does it sound corny? Yeah.
But the truth is, it's a fucking good book. The best apocalypse stories I've read in ages.
So good on you, Yahtzee. You clever, multifarious bastard you....
January 6, 2016
Jam is a bit of a puzzle for me to review. It excels at the exact thing that I'm often the least interested in: plot. It's a well-constructed story with a post-apocalyptic concept that seemed reasonably fresh to me, with a pacing that seldom dragged.
But it made me realize that the only way a misanthrope can really write compelling characters is by being a narcissist. At least then the protagonist gets some development, at least if its based on the author.
The entire story emanates a strong level of contempt for every character involved. Almost everyone has a single character trait, and that character trait can be ignored if it doesn't fit with the direction of the story. If there was some faint praise to be had with Croshaw's previous book, Mogworld, it's that the protagonist was consistently unlikable, and his actions always fit with his motives. Here, an idealist can become a self-serving for a cheap joke, or a mean character a savior, for no greater reason than otherwise the plot would come to a stop.
Writing a humorous book can also be fraught with issues. I think Terry Pratchett succeeded so often because, fundamentally, he wrote good stories with likable characters that just happened to have a lot of fun jokes and whimsical notions thrown in when they seemed appropriate. He was a funny guy, and his books reflected it.
Whereas in Jam, there's an exhaustive ongoing joke about how young people misuse the word ironic, and I'm not sure if it ever worked for me even once. Jokes are often haphazardly thrown into the narrative for no better reason than the author must have felt he'd gone a while without attempting one. Perhaps because Croshaw's main fanbase comes from a humorous web series, he felt it was expected of him, but there are times where the prose is needlessly awkward because it seemed like it would be funnier. There's a pervading sense of, "this is what humorous writing sounds like" which never quite equaled laughs.
Croshaw has created an interesting tale populated by characters that he appears to hate too much to try and get to know better. No character has more than one or two attributes, and at times I almost wanted to yell, "Could you stop with your particular shtick and just be real for a minute?" But he doesn't seem to see the humor in his own hatred of his characters, the kind of awareness that could have pushed the story into a legitimate black comedy.
What I'd really like to see from Croshaw is a genuinely dark novel that in no way deliberately attempts to be funny. I think it could be liberating.
But it made me realize that the only way a misanthrope can really write compelling characters is by being a narcissist. At least then the protagonist gets some development, at least if its based on the author.
The entire story emanates a strong level of contempt for every character involved. Almost everyone has a single character trait, and that character trait can be ignored if it doesn't fit with the direction of the story. If there was some faint praise to be had with Croshaw's previous book, Mogworld, it's that the protagonist was consistently unlikable, and his actions always fit with his motives. Here, an idealist can become a self-serving for a cheap joke, or a mean character a savior, for no greater reason than otherwise the plot would come to a stop.
Writing a humorous book can also be fraught with issues. I think Terry Pratchett succeeded so often because, fundamentally, he wrote good stories with likable characters that just happened to have a lot of fun jokes and whimsical notions thrown in when they seemed appropriate. He was a funny guy, and his books reflected it.
Whereas in Jam, there's an exhaustive ongoing joke about how young people misuse the word ironic, and I'm not sure if it ever worked for me even once. Jokes are often haphazardly thrown into the narrative for no better reason than the author must have felt he'd gone a while without attempting one. Perhaps because Croshaw's main fanbase comes from a humorous web series, he felt it was expected of him, but there are times where the prose is needlessly awkward because it seemed like it would be funnier. There's a pervading sense of, "this is what humorous writing sounds like" which never quite equaled laughs.
Croshaw has created an interesting tale populated by characters that he appears to hate too much to try and get to know better. No character has more than one or two attributes, and at times I almost wanted to yell, "Could you stop with your particular shtick and just be real for a minute?" But he doesn't seem to see the humor in his own hatred of his characters, the kind of awareness that could have pushed the story into a legitimate black comedy.
What I'd really like to see from Croshaw is a genuinely dark novel that in no way deliberately attempts to be funny. I think it could be liberating.
December 7, 2012
This author comes up with the most insane ideas and then makes them not only work, but be really funny and tell a good story besides.
This book is about flesh-eating strawberry jam flooding Brisbane. See what I mean about the basic premise being insane?
But the characters are believable and relatable while still being eccentric and hilarious, the story strolls happily along with a slowly-unravelling mystery threaded into the hijinks of basic survival, and--this was the big surprise to me--the story climax actually gets very tense and scary. I honestly couldn't see how the characters were going to survive and save the day. (Don't worry, it was a satisfying ending--neither too happy nor too tragic.)
My quibbles with the book were that, especially in the beginning, I sometimes had trouble envisioning the scenery, which is a problem when the characters are using the scenery to save themselves from attacking jam. Overly-convenient bits of buildings seemed to keep springing out of nowhere.
That said, I could forgive this. I was amused enough to keep reading, plus the fortunate coincidences stopped happening after the characters got themselves out of the initial perils.
Overall, I'd recommend this as an imaginative and successful comedy.
This book is about flesh-eating strawberry jam flooding Brisbane. See what I mean about the basic premise being insane?
But the characters are believable and relatable while still being eccentric and hilarious, the story strolls happily along with a slowly-unravelling mystery threaded into the hijinks of basic survival, and--this was the big surprise to me--the story climax actually gets very tense and scary. I honestly couldn't see how the characters were going to survive and save the day. (Don't worry, it was a satisfying ending--neither too happy nor too tragic.)
My quibbles with the book were that, especially in the beginning, I sometimes had trouble envisioning the scenery, which is a problem when the characters are using the scenery to save themselves from attacking jam. Overly-convenient bits of buildings seemed to keep springing out of nowhere.
That said, I could forgive this. I was amused enough to keep reading, plus the fortunate coincidences stopped happening after the characters got themselves out of the initial perils.
Overall, I'd recommend this as an imaginative and successful comedy.
March 26, 2019
3.5
Yahtzee Croshaw has an interesting story basis for his stories and Jam is probably one of the weirder ones so far. I had heard this was a Brisbane, Australia based book so I must admit, it went right to the very top of my pile. The book is a very different take on the end of the world storyline and throws The Blob into a city area, something that the first movie and remake couldn't achieve with the budget restrictions. The book was a little hit and miss for me, but the conclusion brings it all home. If you like odd characters and bizarre story beats, Yahtzee Croshaw should be a name in your reading list.
The characters are quite interesting and are not your typical one dimensional cliché riddled cronies. One of the biggest ticks for this book is the wide variety of characters. Each character has an agenda and could serve as the central character of the book. I found the first section of the book was a little slow, but when the wide variety of characters grew, the book stopped the slow introductions and started having fun. Yahtzee is far from your typical character creator and I found the wide variety a nice contrast to the typical thriller and Hollywood writers.
The central storyline is fun, but you have to slug through a very tiresome first section of the book. I found the central discovery a little slow for my taste and probably would have thrown off if this was my first Yahtzee novel. The cliché beginning soon turned into a weird cult storyline which was the highlight of the book. This is where Yahtzee succeeds and he dials it to 11. The Jam is merely a catalyst to overcome and is merely a backburning issue once the story kicks into high gear. The Blob feels like a great influence for Yahtzee and while the films are my favourite cult classics, this book fails to utilise the entity in a productive story. The mixed tone never sits well with me, maybe a film version might settle on a distinct tone, this annoyed me slightly.
Why the 3.5?
I was tossing around the 4 and 3.5, but ultimately landed on the 3.5. The book is fun and out there, but the initial kick-off and ending slightly annoyed me too much. Yahtzee is a fun novelist and I enjoy the worlds he creates, but like all my favourite artists, it's tough to land every single thing you do. Some of the fans love this book and on some level I do as well. Maybe if the novel landed with the cult earlier, or if the jam served as a bigger threat, I don't know what could change my mind. The structure of the novel is a little inconsistent, but it won't throw me off Yahtzee, he more stories to unleash on the world. Read for yourself, but remember that you must leave your mind at the door for these books.
Yahtzee Croshaw has an interesting story basis for his stories and Jam is probably one of the weirder ones so far. I had heard this was a Brisbane, Australia based book so I must admit, it went right to the very top of my pile. The book is a very different take on the end of the world storyline and throws The Blob into a city area, something that the first movie and remake couldn't achieve with the budget restrictions. The book was a little hit and miss for me, but the conclusion brings it all home. If you like odd characters and bizarre story beats, Yahtzee Croshaw should be a name in your reading list.
The characters are quite interesting and are not your typical one dimensional cliché riddled cronies. One of the biggest ticks for this book is the wide variety of characters. Each character has an agenda and could serve as the central character of the book. I found the first section of the book was a little slow, but when the wide variety of characters grew, the book stopped the slow introductions and started having fun. Yahtzee is far from your typical character creator and I found the wide variety a nice contrast to the typical thriller and Hollywood writers.
The central storyline is fun, but you have to slug through a very tiresome first section of the book. I found the central discovery a little slow for my taste and probably would have thrown off if this was my first Yahtzee novel. The cliché beginning soon turned into a weird cult storyline which was the highlight of the book. This is where Yahtzee succeeds and he dials it to 11. The Jam is merely a catalyst to overcome and is merely a backburning issue once the story kicks into high gear. The Blob feels like a great influence for Yahtzee and while the films are my favourite cult classics, this book fails to utilise the entity in a productive story. The mixed tone never sits well with me, maybe a film version might settle on a distinct tone, this annoyed me slightly.
Why the 3.5?
I was tossing around the 4 and 3.5, but ultimately landed on the 3.5. The book is fun and out there, but the initial kick-off and ending slightly annoyed me too much. Yahtzee is a fun novelist and I enjoy the worlds he creates, but like all my favourite artists, it's tough to land every single thing you do. Some of the fans love this book and on some level I do as well. Maybe if the novel landed with the cult earlier, or if the jam served as a bigger threat, I don't know what could change my mind. The structure of the novel is a little inconsistent, but it won't throw me off Yahtzee, he more stories to unleash on the world. Read for yourself, but remember that you must leave your mind at the door for these books.
April 15, 2022
As soon as I let my dad know that I started this weird book found in our shared Audible account, he started gushing about his love for Yahtzee Croshaw, and shortly after I found an email with one of his YouTube videos in my inbox. Soon I found out why.
This book was not only genuinely, laugh-out-loud hilarious, but also had a thorough plot that I would have been invested in regardless. The writing was also fantastic and I kept noting some of the greatest similes I’ve ever heard. It had a good narrative flow, making it hard to put down, and I’d bet if this book was actually about zombies rather than flesh-eating strawberry jam it would be far more popular. But seriously, why would you not want to read about the jam instead?
To make my personal experience more amazing, I had the pleasure of listening to the author himself narrate it, which added another dimension I’m not sure would exist on a written page. To hear the true interpretation and tone of each character (like only speaking monotone, or ending every sentence like a question?) made this far funnier than it would have been otherwise. I noticed the fantastic narration right from the start, before I realized who it even was. It was only when I thought “dang, this guy is good� and went to see who he was (and thus what other narrations he did) when I saw the name.
I will definitely be reading more of his works now, but I am so impressed that I honestly don’t think this can be beat.
This book was not only genuinely, laugh-out-loud hilarious, but also had a thorough plot that I would have been invested in regardless. The writing was also fantastic and I kept noting some of the greatest similes I’ve ever heard. It had a good narrative flow, making it hard to put down, and I’d bet if this book was actually about zombies rather than flesh-eating strawberry jam it would be far more popular. But seriously, why would you not want to read about the jam instead?
To make my personal experience more amazing, I had the pleasure of listening to the author himself narrate it, which added another dimension I’m not sure would exist on a written page. To hear the true interpretation and tone of each character (like only speaking monotone, or ending every sentence like a question?) made this far funnier than it would have been otherwise. I noticed the fantastic narration right from the start, before I realized who it even was. It was only when I thought “dang, this guy is good� and went to see who he was (and thus what other narrations he did) when I saw the name.
I will definitely be reading more of his works now, but I am so impressed that I honestly don’t think this can be beat.
April 25, 2013
Jam / B00A7H2E3W
I loved Yahtzee Croshaw's first book, Mogworld, and I went into Jam expecting to love it and I *did*, so at least I'm both consistent and predictable, lol. (And I'm already on tenterhooks hoping that Jam will come out on audiobook soon so that I can listen to it for a second read-through.) But let me also just state upfront that Jam is not going to be for everyone (though nothing ever is), and then I'll get to why.
Jam is essentially a zombie apocalypse story with the zombies replaced by man-eating jam. Our point-of-view character wakes up one morning to find that his city was covered with three feet of jam while he slept and now it's up to him and the remaining few survivors to paw through the wreckage while navigating the rooftops of a ruined city. And this whole setup reminds me of one of Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation reviews -- I think it was one for Left 4 Dead -- where he theorized that as long as an author can re-create the tension and horror of the zombie apocalypse, you can replace the zombies with koalas and you'd still have a zombie story on your hands. And that's what Jam essentially is: a proof of concept that is delightfully grim and utterly original.
If you've read Mogworld, you'll already be familiar with Yahtzee's style of writing: Jam is semi-serious, but with a strong undercurrent of parody and sardonic wit. Most of the main characters are recklessly stupid and detrimentally self-involved with their personal preoccupations to the point where they routinely prioritize trivial impulses over their basic survival. And in some ways, the villains are differentiated from the protagonists ONLY by a matter of degree: when everything goes all Lord of the Flies a few days after the apocalypse, there's a strong implication that the villains just spiraled down a little faster than the majority of our protagonists.
What keeps the novel from being a bleak indictment of humanity (unlike your usual Lord of the Zombie Apocalypse novel) is the humor that saturates every page. The protagonists bicker amusingly with each other as they work around each others' shortcomings, and with dialogue that had me cracking up on numerous occasions; the villains are cartoonishly evil even as they shrewdly point out the flaws of the protagonists; and the apocalypse surges on around the confused and deeply distressed point-of-view character as he tries to adapt to the total destruction of everything he's ever known. It may not sound like a laugh riot, but it has the same delightful gallows-humor of Mogworld and I loved it: it's like if Douglas Adams wrote a zombie apocalypse with Arthur Dent as the POV character. And also there was jam.
Having said all that, Jam isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea. Many of the protagonists really are (or eventually become) flawed, sexist, racist, stupid, and/or evil to the point where some readers aren't going to appreciate being forced to stick with them to the end; to continue the above analogy, picture Zaphod Beeblebrox slowly devolving from a sexist misanthrope to, well, significantly worse. The characters are frequently called out on many of their flaws, both by each other and by the narrative, but always in a humorously sarcastic way that doesn't really make way for catharsis or improvement. For myself, I found the dysfunctional dynamics of the group incredibly compelling to the point where I finished the book in a day (and enjoyed every minute of it), but I also recognize that dark humor surrounding dark characters isn't going to be for everyone. (Relatedly: if you require your zombie apocalypse novels to be inhabited by sensible characters, this isn't going to satisfy.)
[SEMI-SPOILERS] Speaking of, Jam continues the Mogworld tradition of bittersweet endings where things are nominally fixed but still deeply, terribly broken. Now, granted, this is a zombie apocalypse novel and those are pretty much *guaranteed* to have bittersweet endings unless it turns out to have been a dream all along, but even allowing for the genre and the "sweet" part of the "bittersweet", there's still a profoundly sad note underlying the ending. As a reader, I didn't find the end dissatisfying, but ... it's not something that will sit well with everyone. Again, you'll probably be the best judge for yourself as to whether or not gallows-humor and tempered cynicism will be your thing or not. I offer no judgment on readers, either way. [/END SPOILERS]
I genuinely enjoyed this book and (as mentioned) tore through it in a day simply because I couldn't set it down. The premise is delightfully original, the POV character is deeply sympathetic, and the main characters are flawed in that very special way where they would be utterly insufferable in real life and yet are amusing to follow in a novel just so you can see how badly they will screw things up and so they can all call each other out every five minutes (in a manner which suddenly reminds me of Brian Clevinger's 8-Bit Theater comics, which I also immensely enjoy). If you won't be put off by a little unrealism (in the world) and a lot of unreason (in the characters) in order to carry a lot of delightful gallows-humor, I absolutely recommend this book if only for the sheer uniqueness.
~ Ana Mardoll
I loved Yahtzee Croshaw's first book, Mogworld, and I went into Jam expecting to love it and I *did*, so at least I'm both consistent and predictable, lol. (And I'm already on tenterhooks hoping that Jam will come out on audiobook soon so that I can listen to it for a second read-through.) But let me also just state upfront that Jam is not going to be for everyone (though nothing ever is), and then I'll get to why.
Jam is essentially a zombie apocalypse story with the zombies replaced by man-eating jam. Our point-of-view character wakes up one morning to find that his city was covered with three feet of jam while he slept and now it's up to him and the remaining few survivors to paw through the wreckage while navigating the rooftops of a ruined city. And this whole setup reminds me of one of Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation reviews -- I think it was one for Left 4 Dead -- where he theorized that as long as an author can re-create the tension and horror of the zombie apocalypse, you can replace the zombies with koalas and you'd still have a zombie story on your hands. And that's what Jam essentially is: a proof of concept that is delightfully grim and utterly original.
If you've read Mogworld, you'll already be familiar with Yahtzee's style of writing: Jam is semi-serious, but with a strong undercurrent of parody and sardonic wit. Most of the main characters are recklessly stupid and detrimentally self-involved with their personal preoccupations to the point where they routinely prioritize trivial impulses over their basic survival. And in some ways, the villains are differentiated from the protagonists ONLY by a matter of degree: when everything goes all Lord of the Flies a few days after the apocalypse, there's a strong implication that the villains just spiraled down a little faster than the majority of our protagonists.
What keeps the novel from being a bleak indictment of humanity (unlike your usual Lord of the Zombie Apocalypse novel) is the humor that saturates every page. The protagonists bicker amusingly with each other as they work around each others' shortcomings, and with dialogue that had me cracking up on numerous occasions; the villains are cartoonishly evil even as they shrewdly point out the flaws of the protagonists; and the apocalypse surges on around the confused and deeply distressed point-of-view character as he tries to adapt to the total destruction of everything he's ever known. It may not sound like a laugh riot, but it has the same delightful gallows-humor of Mogworld and I loved it: it's like if Douglas Adams wrote a zombie apocalypse with Arthur Dent as the POV character. And also there was jam.
Having said all that, Jam isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea. Many of the protagonists really are (or eventually become) flawed, sexist, racist, stupid, and/or evil to the point where some readers aren't going to appreciate being forced to stick with them to the end; to continue the above analogy, picture Zaphod Beeblebrox slowly devolving from a sexist misanthrope to, well, significantly worse. The characters are frequently called out on many of their flaws, both by each other and by the narrative, but always in a humorously sarcastic way that doesn't really make way for catharsis or improvement. For myself, I found the dysfunctional dynamics of the group incredibly compelling to the point where I finished the book in a day (and enjoyed every minute of it), but I also recognize that dark humor surrounding dark characters isn't going to be for everyone. (Relatedly: if you require your zombie apocalypse novels to be inhabited by sensible characters, this isn't going to satisfy.)
[SEMI-SPOILERS] Speaking of, Jam continues the Mogworld tradition of bittersweet endings where things are nominally fixed but still deeply, terribly broken. Now, granted, this is a zombie apocalypse novel and those are pretty much *guaranteed* to have bittersweet endings unless it turns out to have been a dream all along, but even allowing for the genre and the "sweet" part of the "bittersweet", there's still a profoundly sad note underlying the ending. As a reader, I didn't find the end dissatisfying, but ... it's not something that will sit well with everyone. Again, you'll probably be the best judge for yourself as to whether or not gallows-humor and tempered cynicism will be your thing or not. I offer no judgment on readers, either way. [/END SPOILERS]
I genuinely enjoyed this book and (as mentioned) tore through it in a day simply because I couldn't set it down. The premise is delightfully original, the POV character is deeply sympathetic, and the main characters are flawed in that very special way where they would be utterly insufferable in real life and yet are amusing to follow in a novel just so you can see how badly they will screw things up and so they can all call each other out every five minutes (in a manner which suddenly reminds me of Brian Clevinger's 8-Bit Theater comics, which I also immensely enjoy). If you won't be put off by a little unrealism (in the world) and a lot of unreason (in the characters) in order to carry a lot of delightful gallows-humor, I absolutely recommend this book if only for the sheer uniqueness.
~ Ana Mardoll
March 3, 2020
This book was pretty fun. A pretty entertaining lampooning of apocalypse survivor stories full of the author’s trademark sarcasm and dry British humor.
December 22, 2016
I'll start this off like just about everyone else who read this book: I'm a huge fan of Croshaw's Zero Punctuation series. It's biting, it's clever, and most importantly, it's absolutely hilarious. The thing I love the most, though, is that it shows Croshaw is smart. He understands gaming in a way that few do and beneath all the crass analogies and hilariously profane word combinations is a person who really "gets" gaming. He always has good reasoning for the way he feels about a game. And, more importantly, he understands story telling! Story is something he almost always rips apart because a lot of games just don't have good plots. So I thought for sure that this book would at the very least be a clever, biting novel that pokes fun at post apocalyptic fiction. Sadly, what I got was one gigantic disappointment.
Let's get the premise out of the way: Jam has flooded the streets of Brisbane. Flesh eating jam. Within three pages, the narrator's roommate frank gets swallowed whole by the jam and it burps up his clothing and bones. So basically, think of it as a strawberry scented version of The Blob. Like most, if not all post apocalyptic fiction, this turns into a survival story. How would one go about surviving the jampocalypse?
Travis and his other roommate Tim soon meet up with Angela, a Starbucks clerk with a fondness for video journalism, and Don, an incredibly surly game designer. They're staying in Don's place for a while, scrounging off of the surrounding apartments, when someone lands a chopper in the apartment. Literally. It destroys the abode and out come X and Y, a woman and man, respectively, who are clearly military and know more than they let on about the sticky situation.
How can anyone who reads this premise not want to read the novel? It's a delightfully weird and fun idea, and somehow, it becomes dull as hell after the first twenty pages or so, when you realize that this is going to be a shallow adventure story. From any other author, this book would be an acceptable but ultimately forgettable story. From Croshaw, the man who once described Silent Hill 2 as being like "fucking a burning dolphin," it's truly baffling how bland and unfunny this whole story is.
For instance, the group finds a mall filled with young people who act and do things ironically. They pretend they're a monarchy ironically. They worship a guy named Crazy Bob ironically. They execute people ironically. They wear plastic bag suits ironically even though it's the only thing keeping them from being swallowed by the jam. And Croshaw tries to make a joke about how annoying it is that they do all these things ironically every single page for a good portion of the book. It's not subtle, and it's not even very funny the first time the joke is cracked, let alone the 100th. Like, I get it. People who do things ironically are super annoying. But for fuck's sake, it's even worse when people just complain about people being ironic all the time.
Okay, so the book isn't terribly funny, but maybe it has a compelling story? Well, not really. It's mostly just shenanigans until about the halfway point, at which point it becomes about a struggle between two factions (an ironic struggle!) before it abandons all that for the answers as to what caused this disaster. None of the characters are deep, but it would have helped immensely if they had any amount of development. Tim, we learn, is kind of goofy but is really into the idea of rebuilding humanity. Don is angry a lot and is absolutely obsessed with getting his hard drive that contains a build for a game (this is such a prevalent plot point that I thought for sure it would lead to some kind of neat twist or development, and instead it is just thrown to the wayside by the end, with zero payoff). Angela is just obsessed with "finding the truth." Travis is... a follower who carries around a tarantula named Mary. We don't learn any of their pasts, don't get a feel for what they're really like.
The really baffling thing is the tone. There are times where it makes clear attempts at being funny, and there are times where it mildly succeeds. But then there are some really dark moments, especially near the end, which ends on one huge downer and tries to lighten things up with a joke that simply doesn't work. You can have something be both funny and serious at the same time. Look at Shaun of the Dead. Or for a more literary equivalent, , which is absolutely hysterical while also feeling like there are real stakes and having good characters you care about. This can work well, but here the writing feels so passive and almost condescending towards the situation that it just doesn't work. In fact, it seems like Croshaw has a general disdain for the book as a whole, which, if true, raises the question of why he decided to write it in the first place.
The ending is also wholly unsatisfying and left me scratching my head. Without giving too much away, the explanation for the jam tries to be funny and fails, a whole lot of sad shit happens, and the final chapter feels like either a non ending, or a sequel hook, and regardless of intention it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It didn't feel like the characters had changed, but maybe that's because we don't even know them that well to begin with.
At the risk of this review becoming too long, I'll say this: just skip it. I read a few negative reviews and picked this up in hopes that they were wrong. They weren't. This is one huge disappointment of a novel through and through. I wasn't expecting great literature or anything. Just a fun, well written read. Instead everything feels half baked, with underwritten characters, a confusing and constantly shifting tone, and a wholly unsatisfying ending. I know Croshaw is better than this. I know he can be hilarious (Zero Punctuation). I know he can be deadly serious (his recent game The Consuming Shadow). You wouldn't know it if this novel was your only exposure to the surly British born Australian. I'm still curious about his other novels, which I've heard far better things about, and I'll still tune in to ZP every week. I'm just hoping this one was a fluke.
Let's get the premise out of the way: Jam has flooded the streets of Brisbane. Flesh eating jam. Within three pages, the narrator's roommate frank gets swallowed whole by the jam and it burps up his clothing and bones. So basically, think of it as a strawberry scented version of The Blob. Like most, if not all post apocalyptic fiction, this turns into a survival story. How would one go about surviving the jampocalypse?
Travis and his other roommate Tim soon meet up with Angela, a Starbucks clerk with a fondness for video journalism, and Don, an incredibly surly game designer. They're staying in Don's place for a while, scrounging off of the surrounding apartments, when someone lands a chopper in the apartment. Literally. It destroys the abode and out come X and Y, a woman and man, respectively, who are clearly military and know more than they let on about the sticky situation.
How can anyone who reads this premise not want to read the novel? It's a delightfully weird and fun idea, and somehow, it becomes dull as hell after the first twenty pages or so, when you realize that this is going to be a shallow adventure story. From any other author, this book would be an acceptable but ultimately forgettable story. From Croshaw, the man who once described Silent Hill 2 as being like "fucking a burning dolphin," it's truly baffling how bland and unfunny this whole story is.
For instance, the group finds a mall filled with young people who act and do things ironically. They pretend they're a monarchy ironically. They worship a guy named Crazy Bob ironically. They execute people ironically. They wear plastic bag suits ironically even though it's the only thing keeping them from being swallowed by the jam. And Croshaw tries to make a joke about how annoying it is that they do all these things ironically every single page for a good portion of the book. It's not subtle, and it's not even very funny the first time the joke is cracked, let alone the 100th. Like, I get it. People who do things ironically are super annoying. But for fuck's sake, it's even worse when people just complain about people being ironic all the time.
Okay, so the book isn't terribly funny, but maybe it has a compelling story? Well, not really. It's mostly just shenanigans until about the halfway point, at which point it becomes about a struggle between two factions (an ironic struggle!) before it abandons all that for the answers as to what caused this disaster. None of the characters are deep, but it would have helped immensely if they had any amount of development. Tim, we learn, is kind of goofy but is really into the idea of rebuilding humanity. Don is angry a lot and is absolutely obsessed with getting his hard drive that contains a build for a game (this is such a prevalent plot point that I thought for sure it would lead to some kind of neat twist or development, and instead it is just thrown to the wayside by the end, with zero payoff). Angela is just obsessed with "finding the truth." Travis is... a follower who carries around a tarantula named Mary. We don't learn any of their pasts, don't get a feel for what they're really like.
The really baffling thing is the tone. There are times where it makes clear attempts at being funny, and there are times where it mildly succeeds. But then there are some really dark moments, especially near the end, which ends on one huge downer and tries to lighten things up with a joke that simply doesn't work. You can have something be both funny and serious at the same time. Look at Shaun of the Dead. Or for a more literary equivalent, , which is absolutely hysterical while also feeling like there are real stakes and having good characters you care about. This can work well, but here the writing feels so passive and almost condescending towards the situation that it just doesn't work. In fact, it seems like Croshaw has a general disdain for the book as a whole, which, if true, raises the question of why he decided to write it in the first place.
The ending is also wholly unsatisfying and left me scratching my head. Without giving too much away, the explanation for the jam tries to be funny and fails, a whole lot of sad shit happens, and the final chapter feels like either a non ending, or a sequel hook, and regardless of intention it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It didn't feel like the characters had changed, but maybe that's because we don't even know them that well to begin with.
At the risk of this review becoming too long, I'll say this: just skip it. I read a few negative reviews and picked this up in hopes that they were wrong. They weren't. This is one huge disappointment of a novel through and through. I wasn't expecting great literature or anything. Just a fun, well written read. Instead everything feels half baked, with underwritten characters, a confusing and constantly shifting tone, and a wholly unsatisfying ending. I know Croshaw is better than this. I know he can be hilarious (Zero Punctuation). I know he can be deadly serious (his recent game The Consuming Shadow). You wouldn't know it if this novel was your only exposure to the surly British born Australian. I'm still curious about his other novels, which I've heard far better things about, and I'll still tune in to ZP every week. I'm just hoping this one was a fluke.
June 10, 2015
“I woke up one morning to discover that the entire city had been covered in a three-foot layer of man-eating jam.�
Croshaw begins his send-up of the future apocalypse with a distinctive strawberry flavor. The man-eating jam that covers Brisbane, Australia immediately devours Travis’s one job-holding roommate who is heading off to the gym to work out. This leaves Travis, our slacker hero, with his surviving roommate, Tim. They find only two other survivors in the building—Don, who was home after working all night on his ‘build� (he’s a game designer), and Angela, a wannabe journalist who works at Starbucks. The four are shocked when X and Y—a man and woman who appear to be on a secret mission with the US government—crash land a helicopter into Don’s apartment. They seem to working for an agency with the acronym HEPL.
Together (and separately) the group must brave aerial stunts and sail on a sea of strawberry jam to reach other survivors and begin colonies. The problem is that there are only two sorts of folks left. Slackers who weren’t on their way to work when the jam hit at the peak of rush hour traffic, and workaholics who were already at the Hibatsu building slaving away.
The twenty-something slackers have taken refuge in the mall where they set up an ironic kingdom, and, with all due irony, kill outsiders. Travis fears for his tarantula, who is weak with hunger. Tim wants to take over the kingdom. He is sure that this apocalypse will give him the chance to start a new world and is concerned with organizing crop production and the like.
Meanwhile, the more A-types at Hibatsu have already formed their own government by committee and are planning a corporate overthrow of other settlements in an effort to gather resources as they work toward a new society.
The juxtaposition of these two groups is funny—neither does very well now that the Internet is permanently down, and survival is more a matter of chance than anything. Don, who single-mindedly holds on to the notion that his hard drive with his build is the only thing that matters, has to deal with all the lunacy as he switches alliances in the effort to find a working computer and upload his build to the cloud.
High school housekeeping: Yahtzee Croshaw has something of a cult following online, where he posts weekly reviews of video games. If you are a gamer, you might enjoy his work. He is witty and his ability to parody—even skewer—something is evident in Jam. If you would enjoy a nice send up of all those ‘dystopian future� novels you’ve been reading, or if you are just looking for something funny, try Jam. Very wacky.
NOTE: This review is also posted on my blog
Croshaw begins his send-up of the future apocalypse with a distinctive strawberry flavor. The man-eating jam that covers Brisbane, Australia immediately devours Travis’s one job-holding roommate who is heading off to the gym to work out. This leaves Travis, our slacker hero, with his surviving roommate, Tim. They find only two other survivors in the building—Don, who was home after working all night on his ‘build� (he’s a game designer), and Angela, a wannabe journalist who works at Starbucks. The four are shocked when X and Y—a man and woman who appear to be on a secret mission with the US government—crash land a helicopter into Don’s apartment. They seem to working for an agency with the acronym HEPL.
Together (and separately) the group must brave aerial stunts and sail on a sea of strawberry jam to reach other survivors and begin colonies. The problem is that there are only two sorts of folks left. Slackers who weren’t on their way to work when the jam hit at the peak of rush hour traffic, and workaholics who were already at the Hibatsu building slaving away.
The twenty-something slackers have taken refuge in the mall where they set up an ironic kingdom, and, with all due irony, kill outsiders. Travis fears for his tarantula, who is weak with hunger. Tim wants to take over the kingdom. He is sure that this apocalypse will give him the chance to start a new world and is concerned with organizing crop production and the like.
Meanwhile, the more A-types at Hibatsu have already formed their own government by committee and are planning a corporate overthrow of other settlements in an effort to gather resources as they work toward a new society.
The juxtaposition of these two groups is funny—neither does very well now that the Internet is permanently down, and survival is more a matter of chance than anything. Don, who single-mindedly holds on to the notion that his hard drive with his build is the only thing that matters, has to deal with all the lunacy as he switches alliances in the effort to find a working computer and upload his build to the cloud.
High school housekeeping: Yahtzee Croshaw has something of a cult following online, where he posts weekly reviews of video games. If you are a gamer, you might enjoy his work. He is witty and his ability to parody—even skewer—something is evident in Jam. If you would enjoy a nice send up of all those ‘dystopian future� novels you’ve been reading, or if you are just looking for something funny, try Jam. Very wacky.
NOTE: This review is also posted on my blog
June 10, 2014
A good fun read, it was nice seeing the best and worst of a bunch of unlikable characters following a Jampocalypse. The characters start off being inherently flawed in a bunch of ways, but it's believable and enjoyable how self-serving they are throughout and it's cool seeing how they manage to work together and all contribute despite being annoying gits. Whenever they are good to each other it's pretty notable and enlightening, and I think Croshaw used this in particular quite well.
All-in-all the pacing was great, there was only one really painfully idiotic character (all the more so since he seemed quite smart otherwise and just has this one moment of painful naivety), and the rest felt quite believable and immersive. And it's always refreshing to see a genre work that doesn't say spiders are evil. That was a nice touch. There was only one thing I couldn't figure out about the plot that I would've liked described, but it was just a minor detail so overall the plot points were all tied up really nicely. Really good and fitting ending, too, I thought.
I felt like the main female characters could have been a little more interesting personality-wise, been developed a bit more, because it would have made them a little more interesting. It does make sense why the perspective character, Travis, wasn't in a convenient position to do this, but it still would have been nice. Just heard the women talking to each other a bit or something, or contribute with their ideas about how thing should be run since there were at least three guys doing that.
But minor quibbles in what was quite a good, fun, morbid and dark read.
All-in-all the pacing was great, there was only one really painfully idiotic character (all the more so since he seemed quite smart otherwise and just has this one moment of painful naivety), and the rest felt quite believable and immersive. And it's always refreshing to see a genre work that doesn't say spiders are evil. That was a nice touch. There was only one thing I couldn't figure out about the plot that I would've liked described, but it was just a minor detail so overall the plot points were all tied up really nicely. Really good and fitting ending, too, I thought.
I felt like the main female characters could have been a little more interesting personality-wise, been developed a bit more, because it would have made them a little more interesting. It does make sense why the perspective character, Travis, wasn't in a convenient position to do this, but it still would have been nice. Just heard the women talking to each other a bit or something, or contribute with their ideas about how thing should be run since there were at least three guys doing that.
But minor quibbles in what was quite a good, fun, morbid and dark read.
September 24, 2018
A solid, humorous take on an apocalyptic scenario. I didn't enjoy this quite as much as Croshaw's other books, but was still quite fun!
January 18, 2013
is known to videogamers as that Australian guy who makes online video reviews for games using animated stick figures (a bit like those on warning signs) on a yellow background, that feature the odd bit of cursing, images of penises, and give you the idea that they're probably made mainly for a young male audience.
[ wikipedia page, ZP's , and video ]
However! Here and there Croshaw drops in the odd reference to (eons ago I watched a lot of that show) and various literature, and he has a way with wit and ranting that reminds me of a young version of John Cleese in . Only with lots of penis and videogame references. It's very much "an online thing" (meaning not always funny, and if funny, not funny to everyone) and every time I think I've found an episode to pass along and say "ok here, here's why I think this is funny" there's always at least 10 seconds that's tasteless enough that I think "no, no, leave it to the teen boys and move along, your friends are just going to think you've played too many videogames and lapsed into the realm of fart jokes, etc." And yet I keep watching his stuff. Maybe it's a gamer thing. Or maybe my sense of humor is just becoming more warped. Let's not answer that, shall we?
Anyway, the guy has some wit about him, and I've wanted to read his books for a while. This is his second - I missed out on getting the first () when it first came out and for some reason it's not in ebook form yet. This time I got in on the purchasing part early enough, gave up on the whole cloud thing and got a paper copy of Jam. [EDIT, as of today, March 1, 2013, Amazon US now has ebooks of both of Croshaw's books. In case you were wondering.]
The short version (I always promise that and fail) - jam arrives unexpectedly in Australia (Brisbane, I think), and eats everything organic. One minute Travis is talking to his roommate Frank as Frank is sliding down the banister of the stairs - they're both leaving their building and talking as they descend.
The start is all about strangers bumping into each other, forming a group who become the adventurers who we will follow on their journey. Yes, I think you can detect some nod to film and videogame type plots here.
One thing I liked right away is that there are some ideas tossed about concerning what you would immediately wonder - "why jam? where did it come from?" - and then you don't get immediate answers. Which you would expect, since most everyone else is dead. This reminded me of the 1990 film , where a small town his held hostage by giant worms from underground, and the characters are always pestering a (geology/seismology) graduate student for a scientific assessment of what the monsters are, and she of course has no answers. And is (rightfully) annoyed that everyone keeps asking her, because of course no one (still living) has seen the things before, and why does everyone assume that she is The Scientist Who Knows All The Answers?! So I really hoped that similarly the whole Cause of the Jam would be teased and that perhaps we might never learn the answer.
So now that I've read Jam and am sitting back and pondering it, I'm trying to figure out exactly how to gauge my liking of it. This is sort of difficult because it's a type of literature I read with a certain set of expectations. After the first few chapters I realized I was in an action-adventure plot with a group who were on a quest that - no matter what people said they were trying to achieve - was really about survival and whether everyone would
1) make it to Place X (an always changing location) and
2) live to see another day and then
3) live long enough to learn whether the jam had only eaten all of Australia or had spread worldwide and the entire planet/human civilization was threatened. So it's a sort of Adventure Apocalypse. Apoca-Adventure. Your brain can easily play along and give you a mental film of the whole thing as you read. (If you have a brain that works with you that way on these sorts of books. Mine adores anything B Movie-ish.)
So knowing that, I don't expect "a sweeping saga in which we all learn about ourselves through the hero's journey" or a realization that "this is all a metaphor, and has Deep Meanings" or feel any need to strike a pose and compare anyone to a character in Paradise Lost. There are jabs at consumer culture, slackers, apathetic hipsters, reality television, journalism, the military, Americans, conspiracy theory, videogame programmers, cube farms, zombies, etc. I enjoy such mocking, and I also enjoyed that there wasn't a belabored Big Point that was being made - or at least not one that the story tried to beat over your head in a smarmy way. If there's anything like that it's more of a nudge and a wink and then a "moving on now, because the villain is strawberry jam."
The characters often seem unfeeling, but more than once Travis - our Everyman slacker dude, will comment that hey, people are dead and no one is acting as if it's a problem or a big deal or caring and what is up with that? (Which is just what the reader might be thinking while reading that.) The other characters act as if Travis's the odd one to make a big deal of this and they turn away. It's a very self aware story. At one point two characters discuss which of them would be the main character if everything that had happened was made into a film. Travis is hurt to discover he isn't even on the list of potential main characters.
I didn't have any emotional investment in any of the people, but I was interested to see if they survived. And if they didn't survive, how they'd be killed off. I hated a few of them mildly, and was pleased by more than one death. It's the kind of book where you mentally note a person and think "boy I hope that one gets killed soon, I'm not going to enjoy a lot more of him faffing about." (I was going to use "Person X" in that sentence, only there is actually a character named X, so it'd just confuse things.)
So the 3 stars mean that I like it, but I will probably not reread it multiple times, quote lines to myself and laugh, but try not to do this in public because it does make people wonder if you're a bit odd. ...I also gave The Great Gatsby 3 stars, so I should give a few more specifics. To me the star levels are all about how much I liked the book and primarily whether I want to reread it someday. So this book I liked, it helped me through a long plane ride, and prior to that an airport terminal where there were jackhammers being used at 6am. The attack of the jam and the weirdness both amused and provided needed distraction. I kept wondering "yes, but now that he's gotten them to Place X, where next? They're surrounded by carnivorous jam..." Not sure if I will reread though, thus only the three. I consider a three yo be quite good though.
I'm sure you could go all lit major and dig up more hidden meanings and themes, but that wasn't what I came to this party for.
I could see myself getting drunk and coming up with a game with other Jam readers where we try to map out Brisbane using only this book - no cheating and looking anything up on Google, and we can only use cocktail napkins and whatever items have come with our beverages to create our topographic map. (This is the sort of bar game where you have to leave a large tip for whoever has to clean up the results.)
As a video game reviewer Croshaw has made multiple jokes about using cover ("chest high walls") - and I noted that yes, taking cover jokes were indeed available to those who were ready to notice them. I'm sure there were even more in-jokes that I missed.
Also props for the use of a . One of the reasons I was reading the book was for the Australian setting, and for me it wouldn't be a proper Aussie setting without a deadly snake or spider or box jelly or some such freakish critter scampering around. It didn't have to be insanely poisonous(though I note that Australia has those by the ton) - though I was ready for something of that sort to drop in somewhere, but yeah, jam ate everything organic, so... Anyway I was satisfied with the Freakishly Large Spider and its continuing saga.
Short version: in the action-adventure-survival-ish genre I only expect to be amused and entertained. I was.
[ wikipedia page, ZP's , and video ]
However! Here and there Croshaw drops in the odd reference to (eons ago I watched a lot of that show) and various literature, and he has a way with wit and ranting that reminds me of a young version of John Cleese in . Only with lots of penis and videogame references. It's very much "an online thing" (meaning not always funny, and if funny, not funny to everyone) and every time I think I've found an episode to pass along and say "ok here, here's why I think this is funny" there's always at least 10 seconds that's tasteless enough that I think "no, no, leave it to the teen boys and move along, your friends are just going to think you've played too many videogames and lapsed into the realm of fart jokes, etc." And yet I keep watching his stuff. Maybe it's a gamer thing. Or maybe my sense of humor is just becoming more warped. Let's not answer that, shall we?
Anyway, the guy has some wit about him, and I've wanted to read his books for a while. This is his second - I missed out on getting the first () when it first came out and for some reason it's not in ebook form yet. This time I got in on the purchasing part early enough, gave up on the whole cloud thing and got a paper copy of Jam. [EDIT, as of today, March 1, 2013, Amazon US now has ebooks of both of Croshaw's books. In case you were wondering.]
The short version (I always promise that and fail) - jam arrives unexpectedly in Australia (Brisbane, I think), and eats everything organic. One minute Travis is talking to his roommate Frank as Frank is sliding down the banister of the stairs - they're both leaving their building and talking as they descend.
P. 8 "...So I was just in time to see him get eaten by the jam.And thus we meet the killer jam. It's strawberry, or so are told by characters describing the scents wafting from the masses of the stuff that cover the town.
He was looking back at me to shout encouragement, so he didn't notice it until he was on top of it, flopping bodily onto the three feet of wobbling red that flooded the bottom of the stairwell. "Urrgh," I heard him say, in the disgusted tone of one falling victim to a messy practical joke. This quickly became "argh" when he realized the jam wasn't letting him go, and that in turn became "AAAAARGH" when he saw his legs, immersed in the semitransparent goo, stripped of their flesh over the course of a second.
The rest of him summoned a burst of effort from somewhere and his torso strained at the ropy red strands that wrapped him like festive ribbons. He reached his last remaining arm out towards me, and his terrified eyes met mine. Then the jam shot out several more tentacles that fastened around his wrist, eyes, and mouth, and he was yanked back with a desperate gurgle.
His wristwatch, iPod, and fillings slowly floated to the surface, with a motion that seemed reminiscent of a satisfied belch.
I very, very slowly turned around and went back up the stairs.
The start is all about strangers bumping into each other, forming a group who become the adventurers who we will follow on their journey. Yes, I think you can detect some nod to film and videogame type plots here.
One thing I liked right away is that there are some ideas tossed about concerning what you would immediately wonder - "why jam? where did it come from?" - and then you don't get immediate answers. Which you would expect, since most everyone else is dead. This reminded me of the 1990 film , where a small town his held hostage by giant worms from underground, and the characters are always pestering a (geology/seismology) graduate student for a scientific assessment of what the monsters are, and she of course has no answers. And is (rightfully) annoyed that everyone keeps asking her, because of course no one (still living) has seen the things before, and why does everyone assume that she is The Scientist Who Knows All The Answers?! So I really hoped that similarly the whole Cause of the Jam would be teased and that perhaps we might never learn the answer.
So now that I've read Jam and am sitting back and pondering it, I'm trying to figure out exactly how to gauge my liking of it. This is sort of difficult because it's a type of literature I read with a certain set of expectations. After the first few chapters I realized I was in an action-adventure plot with a group who were on a quest that - no matter what people said they were trying to achieve - was really about survival and whether everyone would
1) make it to Place X (an always changing location) and
2) live to see another day and then
3) live long enough to learn whether the jam had only eaten all of Australia or had spread worldwide and the entire planet/human civilization was threatened. So it's a sort of Adventure Apocalypse. Apoca-Adventure. Your brain can easily play along and give you a mental film of the whole thing as you read. (If you have a brain that works with you that way on these sorts of books. Mine adores anything B Movie-ish.)
So knowing that, I don't expect "a sweeping saga in which we all learn about ourselves through the hero's journey" or a realization that "this is all a metaphor, and has Deep Meanings" or feel any need to strike a pose and compare anyone to a character in Paradise Lost. There are jabs at consumer culture, slackers, apathetic hipsters, reality television, journalism, the military, Americans, conspiracy theory, videogame programmers, cube farms, zombies, etc. I enjoy such mocking, and I also enjoyed that there wasn't a belabored Big Point that was being made - or at least not one that the story tried to beat over your head in a smarmy way. If there's anything like that it's more of a nudge and a wink and then a "moving on now, because the villain is strawberry jam."
The characters often seem unfeeling, but more than once Travis - our Everyman slacker dude, will comment that hey, people are dead and no one is acting as if it's a problem or a big deal or caring and what is up with that? (Which is just what the reader might be thinking while reading that.) The other characters act as if Travis's the odd one to make a big deal of this and they turn away. It's a very self aware story. At one point two characters discuss which of them would be the main character if everything that had happened was made into a film. Travis is hurt to discover he isn't even on the list of potential main characters.
I didn't have any emotional investment in any of the people, but I was interested to see if they survived. And if they didn't survive, how they'd be killed off. I hated a few of them mildly, and was pleased by more than one death. It's the kind of book where you mentally note a person and think "boy I hope that one gets killed soon, I'm not going to enjoy a lot more of him faffing about." (I was going to use "Person X" in that sentence, only there is actually a character named X, so it'd just confuse things.)
So the 3 stars mean that I like it, but I will probably not reread it multiple times, quote lines to myself and laugh, but try not to do this in public because it does make people wonder if you're a bit odd. ...I also gave The Great Gatsby 3 stars, so I should give a few more specifics. To me the star levels are all about how much I liked the book and primarily whether I want to reread it someday. So this book I liked, it helped me through a long plane ride, and prior to that an airport terminal where there were jackhammers being used at 6am. The attack of the jam and the weirdness both amused and provided needed distraction. I kept wondering "yes, but now that he's gotten them to Place X, where next? They're surrounded by carnivorous jam..." Not sure if I will reread though, thus only the three. I consider a three yo be quite good though.
I'm sure you could go all lit major and dig up more hidden meanings and themes, but that wasn't what I came to this party for.
I could see myself getting drunk and coming up with a game with other Jam readers where we try to map out Brisbane using only this book - no cheating and looking anything up on Google, and we can only use cocktail napkins and whatever items have come with our beverages to create our topographic map. (This is the sort of bar game where you have to leave a large tip for whoever has to clean up the results.)
As a video game reviewer Croshaw has made multiple jokes about using cover ("chest high walls") - and I noted that yes, taking cover jokes were indeed available to those who were ready to notice them. I'm sure there were even more in-jokes that I missed.
Also props for the use of a . One of the reasons I was reading the book was for the Australian setting, and for me it wouldn't be a proper Aussie setting without a deadly snake or spider or box jelly or some such freakish critter scampering around. It didn't have to be insanely poisonous(though I note that Australia has those by the ton) - though I was ready for something of that sort to drop in somewhere, but yeah, jam ate everything organic, so... Anyway I was satisfied with the Freakishly Large Spider and its continuing saga.
Short version: in the action-adventure-survival-ish genre I only expect to be amused and entertained. I was.
January 17, 2021
There's wit and comedy all over this book. I love the author's sense of humour, and how his characters can be so normal but eccentric at the same time. They have this sort of lovable idiot thing going on - their reactions are unpredictable, they get themselves into the most entertaining predicaments, and their priorities are questionable. The jam itself is also a pretty clever apocalyptic device. It has workarounds and with that comes new ways of falling prey to it.
The dance with X to figure out what's being hidden from the survivors is pretty drawn out and not as compelling, but besides that the end of the book still took me by surprise.
The dance with X to figure out what's being hidden from the survivors is pretty drawn out and not as compelling, but besides that the end of the book still took me by surprise.
August 17, 2022
I have to say that this book was pure chaos from start to finish....it just throws you right in the deep end. I love the cynical attitudes that all these characters seem to have- it certainly made for some bizarre situations. So if you're a big fan of dark humour, I'd recommend you give this a read.
November 26, 2013
For the record, I was predisposed to like this book - I don't like (Jelly, for those of us in the US). Also, I like Yahtzee Croshaw - MogWorld was a lovely, twisted and twisting tale, and his vidoes on YouTube are both thoughtful and utterly hilarious. So when a friend said that this had come out and told me the back blurb, I was already hooked.
[...]
Ok, I just deleted a block of text about how I approached this book (which is a gamble I rarely take) because...well, there's a lot of reflections for the big three generations currently knocking about the Western Cultural world. The Baby Boomers, Gen-X, and the Millennials (how'd we get the crap name, again?) all show up at some point, and their various little quirks fill the action and themes of the novel. Trust corporate culture? Check. Subverted. Consumer culture? Touched on, but Romero did it best, so, no harm, no foul. How damned annoying the eternally ironic are? Sweet Maria, and how - plus the creeping sensation that the ironic folks don't really know what irony is (from time to time).
I'd say Yahtzee is a cynic, but he's the honest kind - an optimist that has been mugged by reality, and this comes across in everything he does. In his video game take downs, rhyme downs, and now books - the subtext is that he wants the human race to win through, but he's not really convinced that they have more than a snow's chance in Hell on a balmy Thursday. And this might be why I loved the book so much - you want the characters to survive and thrive in their jammy world, even as they all go various shades of bonkers.
If you want a proper review I can't help you. This is a loving parody of the end of the world, and a grimly hilarious but played murderously straight WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL doom story. You care for the characters even if they are a little thin (this is plot and theme territory, not character analysis), and you want to know what happens next. The middle bit drags for a spell, but Yahtzee's voice carries you through and there are chuckles to be had, even if you want to start drop kicking the cast. The relentless logic followed by the story holds throughout, and the focus is on the humans, not the jam, and how they crumble based on the logic of the story (again, themes).
It's a lot of fun. What was that old quote, "the War wasn't that bad, provided you were with the right people."? You're in good hands for the end of the world as we know it.
Four of Five - check it out.
[...]
Ok, I just deleted a block of text about how I approached this book (which is a gamble I rarely take) because...well, there's a lot of reflections for the big three generations currently knocking about the Western Cultural world. The Baby Boomers, Gen-X, and the Millennials (how'd we get the crap name, again?) all show up at some point, and their various little quirks fill the action and themes of the novel. Trust corporate culture? Check. Subverted. Consumer culture? Touched on, but Romero did it best, so, no harm, no foul. How damned annoying the eternally ironic are? Sweet Maria, and how - plus the creeping sensation that the ironic folks don't really know what irony is (from time to time).
I'd say Yahtzee is a cynic, but he's the honest kind - an optimist that has been mugged by reality, and this comes across in everything he does. In his video game take downs, rhyme downs, and now books - the subtext is that he wants the human race to win through, but he's not really convinced that they have more than a snow's chance in Hell on a balmy Thursday. And this might be why I loved the book so much - you want the characters to survive and thrive in their jammy world, even as they all go various shades of bonkers.
If you want a proper review I can't help you. This is a loving parody of the end of the world, and a grimly hilarious but played murderously straight WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL doom story. You care for the characters even if they are a little thin (this is plot and theme territory, not character analysis), and you want to know what happens next. The middle bit drags for a spell, but Yahtzee's voice carries you through and there are chuckles to be had, even if you want to start drop kicking the cast. The relentless logic followed by the story holds throughout, and the focus is on the humans, not the jam, and how they crumble based on the logic of the story (again, themes).
It's a lot of fun. What was that old quote, "the War wasn't that bad, provided you were with the right people."? You're in good hands for the end of the world as we know it.
Four of Five - check it out.
September 12, 2018
It was a fairly fun read, although a bit of a disappointment as the LOL moments that pervaded every other paragraph of Mogworld were few and far between in Jam. 3.5/5 stars.
July 10, 2014
Yahtzee Croshaw, of internet Zero Punctuation fame, has succeeded in crafting a book both witty and poignant, humanizing and satyrical, and one that is damn entertaining to boot.
In a generation seemingly obsessed with the end of the world and how it will come about, (now that the Mayans are out, zombies are back in as money favorites), Croshaw poses the question that maybe more of us should be asking: is there really any way to predict how the end of society could occur? What if it were something totally unexpected? Like koalas? Or shopping carts? Or...jam?
It is with this question firmly tongue-in-cheek that Croshaw takes on the journey of what could happen were our demise to come about through strawberry preserves, all told through the eyes of our seemingly inept anti-hero, Travis. Joining him along the way are characters who many of us would find in our everyday lives: the wanna-be journalist barista, the slacker friend who has secretly been hoping for an apocalypse, and the guy who may just be a little too obsessed with his job. Throw in a couple of shady government characters, and the story moves along at a steady clip as everyone must deal not only with the incredibility of their world ending in a tide of semi-sentient goo, but also with the fact that now they’re stuck with each other because of it.
Despite it’s somewhat absurd premise, Croshaw succeeds in making this book very human. The book is at its best when we find out what those who are left have done to survive. Unlike some other end-of-the-world scenario books out there, there is no brilliant scientist or action hero that’s going to save the day. Here we get to see what happens when hipster teenagers or office workers are in charge, which is a far more entertaining and probably realistic take on the possible apocalypse drama. Overall, I definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun read and something just a little bit different than what you’re used to reading.
In a generation seemingly obsessed with the end of the world and how it will come about, (now that the Mayans are out, zombies are back in as money favorites), Croshaw poses the question that maybe more of us should be asking: is there really any way to predict how the end of society could occur? What if it were something totally unexpected? Like koalas? Or shopping carts? Or...jam?
It is with this question firmly tongue-in-cheek that Croshaw takes on the journey of what could happen were our demise to come about through strawberry preserves, all told through the eyes of our seemingly inept anti-hero, Travis. Joining him along the way are characters who many of us would find in our everyday lives: the wanna-be journalist barista, the slacker friend who has secretly been hoping for an apocalypse, and the guy who may just be a little too obsessed with his job. Throw in a couple of shady government characters, and the story moves along at a steady clip as everyone must deal not only with the incredibility of their world ending in a tide of semi-sentient goo, but also with the fact that now they’re stuck with each other because of it.
Despite it’s somewhat absurd premise, Croshaw succeeds in making this book very human. The book is at its best when we find out what those who are left have done to survive. Unlike some other end-of-the-world scenario books out there, there is no brilliant scientist or action hero that’s going to save the day. Here we get to see what happens when hipster teenagers or office workers are in charge, which is a far more entertaining and probably realistic take on the possible apocalypse drama. Overall, I definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun read and something just a little bit different than what you’re used to reading.
March 31, 2016
Much like the movie ENCHANTED, JAM is both a love letter and a parody of the apocalypse genre. And it is outrageously funny. Like, I got stares, both from animals and humans, because I was laughing so hard and so much while reading. The characters were realistic and true, just regular people muddling through their (jammed) day. The tone, atmosphere, and mood of the book was helped by so many on point metaphors that I'm counting JAM as reading for my Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing. It's a brilliant book and absolutely a must-read for anyone who likes Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett's GOOD OMENS and Douglas Adams' HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY series.
Humor notwithstanding, what's keeping me from giving the novel a full five stars is the ending. It was super brutal and unexpected for an essentially comic story. I won't spoil anything, but peanut butter and toast fails to be applied.
Humor notwithstanding, what's keeping me from giving the novel a full five stars is the ending. It was super brutal and unexpected for an essentially comic story. I won't spoil anything, but peanut butter and toast fails to be applied.
August 16, 2014
What an odd premise for a story: the protagonist wakes up one morning to find Brisbane covered in a layer of carnivorous strawberry jam. It gets odder than that as well. Throw in a couple of US secret agents, a settlement of survivors that winds up being a weird cult, another run like a corporate entity and an unlikely band of heroes and you have a fun take on the coming apocalypse. There are a few plot threads that were dropped that I thought could have been explored more, but it was a lot of fun.
May 17, 2018
it was a 400 page joke about religion and corporate culture during a jam apocalypse. it could have been an extremely funny 15 page short story or an ironic 60 page novella. instead, for ME, it was a painful 400 page slog where the effort to make constant jokes was visible and yet still ineffective. i am glad for anyone who enjoyed the book and i will try others, but i had such a hard time with this book.
April 19, 2021
It is a book about an apocalypse, with jam in it.
I loved every part of it .. I listened to the audio book and I could really identify with the characters now that each one of them had a special voice.
Great job Yahtzee :)
I loved every part of it .. I listened to the audio book and I could really identify with the characters now that each one of them had a special voice.
Great job Yahtzee :)
September 13, 2013
This book was hilarious. I loved all the little nods to Silent Hill and even Mogworld. Another great story by Yahtzee. I hope he makes an audio book version of this one as well.
April 29, 2013
What a great story. It was a creative ride full of laughs and clever ideas.
May 9, 2016
Had no idea what to expect going into this but this guy has some chops. For me, the timeline was the funniest part of this post apoc story. That and it involved something other than zombies.
December 19, 2014
I suppose I'll start with a preface, because for once, who actually wrote this book is kind of important. For those of you who do not know, I am a huge fan of the ongoing Youtube video-game review series that goes by the name of Zero Punctuation. The host Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw, is a fast-talking Australian/Brit, who usually savagely rips apart video-games in a mix of crude and extremely witty humor that is flung at you at the speed of a machine gun. Basically, it's freakin' hilarious if you can both keep up with what he is saying and not get offended in some way, and since Croshaw also works for the magazine The Escapist, these reviews have been coming out weekly for quite awhile, and are usually extremely high quality for the most part. So, imagine my surprise when I learned that Yahtzee has actually written two novels to date, the first being the MMO/fantasy book Mogworld, and the second being Jam, the book we'll be talking about today.
The plot of Jam is very straight-forward; it's the apocalypse that nobody was expecting. When our main character Travis wakes up during a brisk morning in Brisbane, he finds that it is neither zombies, earthquakes, a new ice age or rampaging dinosaurs that has finally destroyed the world, but rather a wave of carnivorous jam that has flooded the city eating every person or organic lifeforms it touches. No really, that is the plot. Travis understandably takes a few moments to register this, but after watching his roommate Frank get eaten by the jam right in front of him(and in case you think this is a spoiler it literally happens on the second page of the book), he teams up with his childhood friend Tim, a would-be journalist named Angela, and a constantly irritated man named Don to not only survive the deadly sea of preservative, a group of ironic plastic cultists and two mysterious secret agents that literally fall out of the sky in a helicopter, but figure what the hell could have possibly caused this bizarre apocalypse. It's basically, as the characters put it, The Floor is Lava: Jam Edition.
There was a momentary pause as the person on the second floor internally debated their options; then a female face, wearing a baseball cap, appeared at the railing. "Why not?"
"Jam," said Tim and I in unison.
"It's jammed?" she said. We pointed, and she finally looked down into the foyer. "Oh. Oh my."
"Don't touch it! It eats people!" warned Tim.
"It ate Frank," I added. -Page 15
So, if you couldn't tell, Jam is very much a comedic novel first and foremost. I guess that makes sense, Yahtzee is after all a comedian(ish), so it's a good thing that the book is very, very funny. Interactions between characters as they try to comprehend their absurd situation or work through one of the many problems that comes up when surviving a sea of carnivorous jam. Yahtzee just has a way with words to amplify every comedic saturation that comes up, but after all, this is not a five minute review on YouTube expressly to make the viewer laugh; crafting an actual flowing narrative is a whole other thing entirely. So how does the novel stack up, not as a comedy, but as, you know, a book. Well, I'll guess I'll focus on the negatives first. The premise is just sort of a one-time joke. The mere comedic power and absurdity of the premise has worn off once you've gotten adjusted to the flow of the book, and Yahtzee doesn't seem to have a lot more to do with it, so it kind of just hangs around for the rest of the book, choosing its time to pick off characters whenever the plot calls for it. A little disappointing, considering the vast number of things I know he could have done with it. The only real enhancement of the premise is the when the jam-proof plastic suits are introduced a third or so into the book, but I expect the only reason those exist so Yahtzee didn't need to keep coming up with new ways how the characters would navigate the sea of jam. Also, as many have pointed out in other reviews of this book, like the premise, the narrative itself seems like it's spread a little thin(amazing pun intended). Looking back on the book, not a lot actually happens considering the length, but even though that is a problem I need to point out, I will add that I was never once bored while I was reading the book. That's probably mostly due to the mix of Yahtzee's clever comedic writing and his ability to keep throwing the characters into stupid but hilarious situations. Seriously, I don't think Travis and the rest ever meet a person who isn't either crazy, robotic or trying to kill them throughout the entire book, so either Yahtzee is being clever and making fun of the trope that most apocalypse novels have civilization and human decency collapsing within a couple of days, or he's actually being serious and being a bad writer. Really though, it's extremely likely it's the former, I find it hard to believe he's being serious when at one point Tim is a candidate in an election/rebellion to overthrow an "ironic" cult of plastic wearing fanatics in which his opponent goes by the name, and I quote, "Lord Awesomo". So yeah, he's probably just having a little fun.
While from a technical standout, the writing is quite good, I just wish that Yahtzee had occasionally tried to be a little more serious occasionally. OK, yes, it might be hard to get into the deep complexity of characters when they are surrounded by man-eating jam, but even when it seems like the novel should dip into the characters or actually take itself seriously for a moment, it usually doesn't, and then just waves the whole thing off with a joke. It doesn't seem to ever have the confidence to ever expect to be taken seriously, and maybe for good reason, but I would have liked to see Yahtzee, well, maybe "try harder" is the wrong phrase, but have the courage to show he's more than just the silly video-game reviewer that he portrays himself as. Especially because I already know for a fact after reading some of his works that he can pull off some legitimately good writing. And this complaint would stand for the entire duration of the book... if not for the fantastic ending. We'll get to that.
guess it is time to start talking about characters, and I suppose we can start with Travis, our main character, who is both my favorite and the most well-developed character in the entire cast. Travis starts the book as a textbook hopeless person. He is the sort of person who is extremely passive, he always just sort of goes with the flow without really voicing an opinion, which isn't helped by the fact that he is clueless about how to handle awkward or pressuring situations. This leads to him being sort of lowest ring of the survivors, and the butt of everyone's jokes, which I thought was interesting. Hell, they even point this out directly in the novel, where the characters are having a (totally in context conversation) about who the main character would be if this a apocalypse movie, Angela points out that Travis would the last person you would choose to be the main character, telling that him that he "isn't exactly dynamic". And he really isn't. He isn't assertive, he isn't even in the middle of things half the time; he behaves exactly the opposite of how an insert main-character would, but it's here where he gets his depth as a character. Granted , he is a sort of a late-bloomer, development only moving past from hints to action almost near the end of the novel, and it's only until maybe the last few pages that his character finally lays the cards on the table, but in a truly great bit of writing on Yahtzee's part. And for that, I can appreciate him for being original, entertaining, and pretty a great character to boot.
Tim is Travis' perhaps only real friend at the start of the book, and pretty much the exact opposite of Travis in every conceivable way. With his old tiresome life behind due to the obvious, Tim has renewed vigor for live and is ready to take on the world, whether he is actually ready for it or not. He's mostly there to act as a stark contrasts to Travis probably, being reckless where Travis is overly cautious, and a little abrasive where Travis is apologetic. His character isn't exactly anything original, but Yahtzee him takes in a direction, that while well trodden on by other apocalypse stories, it feels fresh enough due to the sort of unique character dynamic between him and Travis, especially towards the end of the book. Again, no spoilers, but credit due that his rather radical development is hinted throughout the text as early as the first few pages.
Don is the straight man, the one who completely recognizes the absolute absurdity of this entire situation, and is pretty much pissed off all of the time because of that. The humor in his character comes from the fact that he was actually a functioning member of society before the jampocalypse, and now that he is stuck in a group of former slackers who are either in his eyes pathetic or occasionally retarded, well, the comedy possibilities are endless. However, Don actually is one of the more developed members in the cast, and while I won't give away exactly how he changes from the beginning of the book to the end, the way his development(as well as Travis') is handled is my absolute favorite kind, developing through subtle actions and the such. And while his personality never changes, all you need to do is read between the lines to figure out how he really feels, and that is a huge plus is my book.
The rest of the characters are mostly just there. Yahtzee provides them with dialogue that is entertaining, but people like Angela, Princess Ravenhair(who appears later on), and even the two secret agents X and Y ultimately. That's alright I suppose, honestly we're probably lucky that we got as much growth in the characters as we did, so I suppose I'm okay with the characters as a whole. Besides from Travis, none of them are particularly fantastic, but thanks to Yahtzee's dialogue, I won't be forgetting them anytime soon. And you know what, that says a lot.
My voice trailed away. Don folded his arms and sighed through his teeth, irritated by his own emotions. "You really are hopeless aren't you."
"Not anymore."
-Page 398
I guess I'll talk about the ending of the book for a bit, which really, you usually shouldn't ever do in a spoiler-free review such as this one, but there's a couple points I need to take away from it, so bear with me. So, I think I've made it clear that throughout my review that when I was reading this book, I never really decided if I thought that Yahtzee was a capable writer or not. Whether he actually had graduated from his quick and fun Youtube videos and crafted a narrative worthy of celebration. And you know, if the book had ended maybe about 20 pages earlier, I would've said no. I would've said that while it was tons of fun to read, Jam wasn't anything more than a good comedy with great dialogue, and would have left it at that, and possibly have never written this review. But the book did not end 20 pages earlier. Look, I'm not going to pretend the ending is any sort of amazing piece of literature, but what it was was exactly I wanted to see from Yahtzee for this entire book, a genuine, great piece of writing. As the book enters the climax, it might seem like little has changed, but through certain pieces of dialouge, I began to realize that things were getting darker. A lot darker, but the book still had the humor going strong. As the book went on, and sentences that carried subtle emotional depth wormed their way in, I realized that I didn't know if I was supposed to be laughing or not anymore. That turned into uncertainty, and then finally as the last few pages went by, I realized that this was becoming honestly extremely depressing, and as Travis' character's tips its hand, I was honestly and completely emotional invested in what was happening. Yahtzee still surprised me even though I had been expecting this kind of thing for the whole book, and that was because he did it in his own unique way. So... well done sir.
Jam won't exactly be changing any lives any time soon, but I recommended not only because of the ending, but just because it is funny as hell, which was, after all, the author's original intent. It's a great comedic book that just goes a little above and beyond what was expected, and I just love when a book can take something as absurd, and let's be honest, as stupid as this premise, and make a good book out of it. So go check it out and have a laugh, and hopefully a little more than that. Goodbye for now guys.
Final Verdict: 7(.5)/10
P.S: "I couldn't find a stick."
January 7, 2013
“I woke up one morning to find that the entire city had been covered in a three-foot layer of man-eating jam.� This is the first sentence in Ben “Yahtzee� Croshaw’s latest novel, Jam, and it sets the dark but comedic tone of the whole book. It’s a book about an end of the world scenario that no one could have expected. Rather than include a cast of confident characters that have what it takes to survive, it’s about average people trying not to be killed by some man-eating jam. The style is well suited to Crowshaw who has lots experience in humor writing with his last novel, Mogworld, as well as his job as a harsh video game reviewer online. Despite all that though, Jam isn't quite perfect but just barely so.
The story takes place in Brisbane, Australia. After the immediate revelation that three feet of strawberry-scented death awaits just outside, we meet the main character, Travis, and his roommate, Frank. By the next page Frank is eaten by the Jam. From there, Travis and the several other characters we meet in the apartment building (including a spider Travis names Mary) begin their survival in this unexpected apocalypse. Eventually the characters dubbed “X� and “Y� are introduced as two mysterious American agents that seem have something to hide. They aren’t incredibly important until late in the book’s second act and into the third. The apartment becomes an unfavorable settlement and the characters make their way to a new location. The book keeps things very fresh and lively with the introduction of a cult-like group of hipsters that use plastic bag suits to guard against the jam. The story still manages to create tension and have plenty of jokes but it eventually loses a bit of steam into the mid second act. Things pick back up in the third act when the jam becomes a bigger threat again, there’s more tension, there’s some really solid jokes, and the big reveals are happening. It comes to an end with some unexpected twists leading to a somewhat sadder ending than I expected, but an appropriate one nonetheless.
My problems with Jam are few but still worth noting and enough to warrant a four out of five star rating. First is the somewhat too frequent issue in insufficiently helping the reader properly visualize the scene, specifically when a character is just rescued out of nowhere. It’s a common trope of apocalyptic survival fiction to have a character make it through a close call with imminent death. This happens mostly early in the novel, but there’s an issue with Croshaw not properly describing how the scenery looks and how the characters are being rescued. It causes a few of those early moments of tension to fall a bit flat when one’s sitting wondering how this building or sign just appeared at the last moment to save the day. Then there’s what happens with the story around midway through. It drops a fair amount of the comedy and humor that really helped it and doesn't manage to pick it back up completely until the third act. It creates some mildly jarring “mood whiplash� but it’s excusable because the book still works from there with a slightly darker tone, it just takes some adjusting to. And to be clear it still has the humor that makes it such a good read, it’s just more spaced out when it reaches this point. My final issue is incredibly minor but bothered me enough to give it a mention. The jam eventually becomes a sort of non-issue in the second act. The book gets into other events that are still interesting but there seemed to be a sufficient lack of the jam appearing to be a threat to any of the main characters until the final stretch when things get very good. While those might not seem like the largest of problems they add up but still end up only detracting from the book in minor ways.
When Jam gets it right, it nails it. As mentioned before, Croshaw is fantastic at snarky humor writing. Despite the slight drop off in the volume of it around the middle of the book, the humor is very solid throughout. The book hits the ground running with plenty of light-hearted humor early on. However, probably the best lines are dropped by the hipster “ironic� survivors they meet at the nearby mall. � ‘Halt! Who goes there?�... ‘He’s been doing the medieval-guard thing all day.� ‘Dude, I’m making, like, an *ironic* statement,� said the first guard, covering his mouth as if to whisper speaking at a normal level. ‘I’m saying that we've basically gone back to medieval times ‘cos there’s no electricity but we haven’t really?� ‘Yeah, man, that� s *ironic* as hell,�... whenever they said the word ironic they put a peculiar emphasis on it... as if they were trying to say the word in as ironic a way as possible.� The entire Briar center is like that, they eventually ironically execute a survivor there for eating some of the yogurt that belongs to the man that they worship in a cult-like manner. They become a tongue-in-cheek satire of the hipster/internet culture’s silly obsession and misidentification of irony. The entire book is a self-satire of the apocalypse survival genre. Almost every piece of fiction in that genre features cool and collected main characters that can handle the situation they’re in, and they’re almost all very serious in tone. Jam is an obvious flip of all of those ideas and succeeds in being very enjoyable because of its inept cast and tone.
Jam features a cast of characters that are nothing like the average apocalypse survival piece. The main characters are Travis, whose perspective the story is told from, his flatmate Tim, disgruntled game developer (and Mogworld throwback) Don, barista and journalism student Angela, a Goliath Birdeater spider named Mary, and the code named “X� and “Y� duo of not-so-secret American agents. All of the characters have generally good execution in their development of their personalities. Besides Travis, Angela ends up being the flattest character of them all but even that’s not saying a lot and its easily excusable. Travis isn’t the most likeable nor does he have much of a personality, but this all seems intentional to let the reader project themselves onto him. The author even makes a hint that he’s aware of it with this quote. � �... I’ll just do whatever everyone else is doing.� ‘Oh, will you,� said Don, frustrated. ‘What a bold and respectable position. Just go to sleep, Travis. Maybe the personality fairy will visit you in the night.� I went to sleep anyway. Just to show him.� Be that as it may, Travis isn’t a wooden board either. He develops a meaningful, if still strange and a bit insane, relationship with Mary the spider. He also proves himself as one of the most competent characters by the end of the book. Travis’s character manages to go on the “hero’s journey� and develop while still remaining blank enough to let the reader “jump into his shoes� so to speak.
In regard to the ending, it’s what saved a lot of the second half from being a bit too dry. The humor is there but the tone and plot warrant less jokes and more seriousness, which is fine but not quite in alignment with the book’s start. The ending delivers in all aspects though. It has some of the best jokes, the most tension, satisfying plot reveals and twists, and some of the book’s biggest character development. It ends up being not the happiest thing but also by no means is it a tragedy.
Jam is an incredibly solid novel that flips its own genre on its head. There’s some excellent laughs to be had, Croshaw is even able to do written slapstick, and it takes the reader to a funny scenario of an apocalypse. The flaws are even minor enough to call this book a 4.5 out of 5. I highly recommend it to just about anyone.
The story takes place in Brisbane, Australia. After the immediate revelation that three feet of strawberry-scented death awaits just outside, we meet the main character, Travis, and his roommate, Frank. By the next page Frank is eaten by the Jam. From there, Travis and the several other characters we meet in the apartment building (including a spider Travis names Mary) begin their survival in this unexpected apocalypse. Eventually the characters dubbed “X� and “Y� are introduced as two mysterious American agents that seem have something to hide. They aren’t incredibly important until late in the book’s second act and into the third. The apartment becomes an unfavorable settlement and the characters make their way to a new location. The book keeps things very fresh and lively with the introduction of a cult-like group of hipsters that use plastic bag suits to guard against the jam. The story still manages to create tension and have plenty of jokes but it eventually loses a bit of steam into the mid second act. Things pick back up in the third act when the jam becomes a bigger threat again, there’s more tension, there’s some really solid jokes, and the big reveals are happening. It comes to an end with some unexpected twists leading to a somewhat sadder ending than I expected, but an appropriate one nonetheless.
My problems with Jam are few but still worth noting and enough to warrant a four out of five star rating. First is the somewhat too frequent issue in insufficiently helping the reader properly visualize the scene, specifically when a character is just rescued out of nowhere. It’s a common trope of apocalyptic survival fiction to have a character make it through a close call with imminent death. This happens mostly early in the novel, but there’s an issue with Croshaw not properly describing how the scenery looks and how the characters are being rescued. It causes a few of those early moments of tension to fall a bit flat when one’s sitting wondering how this building or sign just appeared at the last moment to save the day. Then there’s what happens with the story around midway through. It drops a fair amount of the comedy and humor that really helped it and doesn't manage to pick it back up completely until the third act. It creates some mildly jarring “mood whiplash� but it’s excusable because the book still works from there with a slightly darker tone, it just takes some adjusting to. And to be clear it still has the humor that makes it such a good read, it’s just more spaced out when it reaches this point. My final issue is incredibly minor but bothered me enough to give it a mention. The jam eventually becomes a sort of non-issue in the second act. The book gets into other events that are still interesting but there seemed to be a sufficient lack of the jam appearing to be a threat to any of the main characters until the final stretch when things get very good. While those might not seem like the largest of problems they add up but still end up only detracting from the book in minor ways.
When Jam gets it right, it nails it. As mentioned before, Croshaw is fantastic at snarky humor writing. Despite the slight drop off in the volume of it around the middle of the book, the humor is very solid throughout. The book hits the ground running with plenty of light-hearted humor early on. However, probably the best lines are dropped by the hipster “ironic� survivors they meet at the nearby mall. � ‘Halt! Who goes there?�... ‘He’s been doing the medieval-guard thing all day.� ‘Dude, I’m making, like, an *ironic* statement,� said the first guard, covering his mouth as if to whisper speaking at a normal level. ‘I’m saying that we've basically gone back to medieval times ‘cos there’s no electricity but we haven’t really?� ‘Yeah, man, that� s *ironic* as hell,�... whenever they said the word ironic they put a peculiar emphasis on it... as if they were trying to say the word in as ironic a way as possible.� The entire Briar center is like that, they eventually ironically execute a survivor there for eating some of the yogurt that belongs to the man that they worship in a cult-like manner. They become a tongue-in-cheek satire of the hipster/internet culture’s silly obsession and misidentification of irony. The entire book is a self-satire of the apocalypse survival genre. Almost every piece of fiction in that genre features cool and collected main characters that can handle the situation they’re in, and they’re almost all very serious in tone. Jam is an obvious flip of all of those ideas and succeeds in being very enjoyable because of its inept cast and tone.
Jam features a cast of characters that are nothing like the average apocalypse survival piece. The main characters are Travis, whose perspective the story is told from, his flatmate Tim, disgruntled game developer (and Mogworld throwback) Don, barista and journalism student Angela, a Goliath Birdeater spider named Mary, and the code named “X� and “Y� duo of not-so-secret American agents. All of the characters have generally good execution in their development of their personalities. Besides Travis, Angela ends up being the flattest character of them all but even that’s not saying a lot and its easily excusable. Travis isn’t the most likeable nor does he have much of a personality, but this all seems intentional to let the reader project themselves onto him. The author even makes a hint that he’s aware of it with this quote. � �... I’ll just do whatever everyone else is doing.� ‘Oh, will you,� said Don, frustrated. ‘What a bold and respectable position. Just go to sleep, Travis. Maybe the personality fairy will visit you in the night.� I went to sleep anyway. Just to show him.� Be that as it may, Travis isn’t a wooden board either. He develops a meaningful, if still strange and a bit insane, relationship with Mary the spider. He also proves himself as one of the most competent characters by the end of the book. Travis’s character manages to go on the “hero’s journey� and develop while still remaining blank enough to let the reader “jump into his shoes� so to speak.
In regard to the ending, it’s what saved a lot of the second half from being a bit too dry. The humor is there but the tone and plot warrant less jokes and more seriousness, which is fine but not quite in alignment with the book’s start. The ending delivers in all aspects though. It has some of the best jokes, the most tension, satisfying plot reveals and twists, and some of the book’s biggest character development. It ends up being not the happiest thing but also by no means is it a tragedy.
Jam is an incredibly solid novel that flips its own genre on its head. There’s some excellent laughs to be had, Croshaw is even able to do written slapstick, and it takes the reader to a funny scenario of an apocalypse. The flaws are even minor enough to call this book a 4.5 out of 5. I highly recommend it to just about anyone.
January 4, 2019
3.5 stars. What can I say about a carnivorous jam plague that has taken over Australia that hasn’t already been said. I liked the concept, I liked the story, but I found at times the glib nature of the two refugee camps (especially after only 3 days) was a little stretched. I also was annoyed at the fact that I kept trying to figure out how these people were wading in jam in plastic bags and then when they left the jam why weren’t their bags covered in the sticky stuff still. This was somewhat explained in the last 10 pages but it kept pulling me out of the visuals of the story because all I pictured was jam on all the clothes and plastic bags!
April 7, 2022
Thanks to Shasta for the completely bizarre reading suggestion!
I'd never read Croshaw before, and what you don't know is that you're not just reading him for the completely fucked concept that the story is based on, but also for his genius turns of phrase that make even the worst things happening in the book still amusing. I laughed out loud more than once by reading this, and while it ends a little weakly, there is symmetry there, because the beginning's a little soft, too. I took this as deliberate, since we are coming out of and going back into a different status quo than exists for most of Jam, the weirdest book I might read this year.
I'd never read Croshaw before, and what you don't know is that you're not just reading him for the completely fucked concept that the story is based on, but also for his genius turns of phrase that make even the worst things happening in the book still amusing. I laughed out loud more than once by reading this, and while it ends a little weakly, there is symmetry there, because the beginning's a little soft, too. I took this as deliberate, since we are coming out of and going back into a different status quo than exists for most of Jam, the weirdest book I might read this year.
February 13, 2020
Some ideas can only be an idea. They are fun, silly ideas that can never expand beyond it's novelty. You would think Jam would fall into that category!
'Flesh eating Jam invades an Australian city killing 90% of the population.'
You wouldn't think much could be done with that premise. Surprisingly, Yahtzee takes it a step further than I would have expected. He explores who, logically, the survivors would be. How would society adapt and change to this epidemic and at the same time adds a mystery to be solved.
The characters all have their quirks and the way they cope with the Jam makes a fabulous read.
'Flesh eating Jam invades an Australian city killing 90% of the population.'
You wouldn't think much could be done with that premise. Surprisingly, Yahtzee takes it a step further than I would have expected. He explores who, logically, the survivors would be. How would society adapt and change to this epidemic and at the same time adds a mystery to be solved.
The characters all have their quirks and the way they cope with the Jam makes a fabulous read.
January 15, 2023
This is not at all the type of book I normally read. However, my bestie recommended to me and I'm so glad she did. This is a weird, fun read about man-eating strawberry jam taking over Brisbane. From the beginning I was compelled to see what happened next- first the struggle to find other survivors, how to navigate the jam, and then fighting between the survivors. I would never have picked this book up on my own, but I'm really glad I read it!
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