A review of bang. an apocalypse by Mason "Tailsteak" Williams

[Sofox]

As you may know, Mason wrote and self published a book recently. Here is my review:

A review of bang. an apocalypse. by Mason "Tailsteak" Williams?

So I've just finished reading "bang. an apocalypse." (I swear, a guy who puts full stops in the title?). Actually, I can never figure out how it's meant to be spelt. It's all lowercase and I'm never sure whether there's meant to by a hyphen or colon between the two parts; on the author's Twitter he used full stops and the actual book cover and sales page actually contain zero punctuation. If I'm going to be the first to review this book (since Mason sucks at marketing, no offense), I'm going to have to call it something.

So I'm just call it BAA for the rest of this review, is that alright?

Anyway, what I eventually figured BAA out to be was a contemporary biblical thriller. Despite the title, it's very much set in the present day (in various locations in America, if you are concerned about that sort of thing). It "feels" very much like a Hollywood blockbuster in terms of pace, characterisation, even plot (the fact that Terminator 2 is referenced more than once is no coincidence), and as for the biblical part... well...


Religion isn't dealt with that much in popular culture. For some reason it tends to somewhat controversial. I personally haven't seen a wide range of treatments of religion in works of fiction but in any event Mason's approach strikes me as original and pretty cool. He doesn't seem to take any obvious religious stance but rather takes a literal interpretation of the bible in terms of how heaven, hell and afterlife work; extend them to their logical conclusion; and practically without prejudice he uses them as the setting of the world his book takes place in. In BAA's world the cold hard truth is that the only way to avoid eternal torture is to follow the bible, obay it's teachings and be saved. However, since most people's faith doesn't even include a bible and there's no way for people to know if there even is a "one true faith", it doesn't exactly make for a happy, happy, fun time for most people's afterlife. If this book is going to make anyone uncomfortable, it's not because it attacks a faith (which it doesn't), but because it brings into stark relief what a lot of commonly accepted tenets of the bible mean in the real world. 

Of course, the book doesn't overindulge in this, in fact it keeps it's mention of the bible to a surprising minority of the time, which is to it' strength, but also a slight weakness. A strength in that the reader never needs to worry about being indulged in morality/biblical/religious talk, because it's never talked about at length and when it is its directly relevant to the plot, what's going on, and mentioned by characters in a realistic and straightforward fashion. However, it's slightly to it's weakness because I felt that there's also a couple of very clever interpretations and ideas with the biblical aspect that I feel were worth more attention and discussion, particularly the the motivations of the power's that be for starting things off in the first place. Also, there are a couple of things that could have done with elaborating on, particularly as some of it comes in very important later.

One nice thing about the book is that it moves very fluidly. At the start it seems like they're going to do a "constantly shifting perspective" sort of thing; but no, once it pick up we're given a strong set of events that keeps our interests and throws us no shortage of surprises. Ultimately, the book focuses on the characters involved and their actions, and since there aren't that many characters in the book, it's easy to keep track of what's going on (again, sorta like a Hollywood movie). To bring up the laboured Hollywood comparison again, the book also feels pretty light (physically), and is fairly fast to get through. Easily a one sitting read if you've got a few hours to spare.

And... oh yeah, the plot: So we have this regular women in her... 20s? 30s?... who goes on date with someone she met on a dating site. The date goes alright, they end up in her apartment, and then suddenly a guy who recently woke up from in a hospital ward knocks on her door and tells her she's in danger and needs to entrust him with her safety. She's hesitant to believe him at first, but when a large amount of people with guns (including her date) suddenly appear and start trying to kill her, she is left with very few options. This leads to roaring chase sequences, her having to leave her regular life, and a whole load of "crazy shit" as they go on a journey while she tries to figure out where they're going, how much she can trust her sudden protector and what exactly is going on. What the women can figure out is that she's part of an upcoming biblical event which the whole book seems to be leading up to, but not having done much bible reading herself she ends up knowing the exact name of the biblical event she's meant to be a part of, but not exactly what it entails (the hint's in the book title, or your local Oxford English Dictionary)

The woman, Sandra, unfortunately comes off as a little bland. I never really felt much affection for her. She's a perfectly serviceable protagonist but, like a standard Hollywood archetype, she rarely does anything not determined by the plot or demonstrating anything above a minimum level of character development. "Regular girl forced to deal with tough circumstance and does so adequately well," that's all she ever is. She never surprises me or does something that lets me know she's anything more than a robot following the most logical and obvious option in most circumstance.

And her *ahem* saviour? Trevor is his name, and he actually comes across as pretty awesome. Sure, he can do incredible, practically superhuman, things in a physical capacity (for clearly explained reasons); but overall he's just a fun to be around. Good personality, interesting listening to him talk to the other characters about backstory and the biblical aspect of the situation they are in, and there's also his thought out morality system which is a nice touch to his character. There's more to him then all that, but the fact I can't concisely describe him is part of what makes him a good character. 

So the characters are great, the journey is excellent, but as for how it resolves... well, I wasn't too keen on it. There's a big change towards the end, massive, but I never felt I fully appreciated how this change happened, or what it's full implications were. As I said earlier I felt more info on the world's backdrop could have been given more clarification but whether that was the cause or not, I found that with the big event happening with the broad action being clear but all the little details and ramification being not so clear, my mind was filled with many questions that the book didn't seem to clearly answer. It was with that uncertain mindset that I made it to the last page.

Of course, anything dealing with the afterlife concepts will always have many unanswered questions and uncertainties (such as: "is there an afterlife after the afterlife"), it's just that the book did a good enough job of keeping things clear for the most part that when the change came along I was looking for similar clarity and answers to various questions that never fully came.

Still, the books ending isn't aggravating or pisstaking, in fact it's pretty decent. You pretty much know what happens to the main characters and everything is resolved; some readers might even find the change thought provoking and treat the unanswered questions as stimulating rather than irritating. In any event, it's not a serious quibble, it's just that when you read a good book you just want a perfect ending that caps it off perfectly and I felt the book fell short of that.


So overall: Why yes it is a good book. I recommend it.

Verdict: Buy - Purchase link

[Alondro]

I'd like to see someone write a book about Revelation in the modern context and get it right.

Somehow, even though the source material could not possibly be more available, no one ever seems to bother to carefully read it before writing.  Either that or they just can't understand it.

[VAE]

I'd like to see someone write a book about Revelation in the modern context and get it right.

Somehow, even though the source material could not possibly be more available, no one ever seems to bother to carefully read it before writing.  Either that or they just can't understand it.

Have you read Apocamon?