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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, John Dies at the End, 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.