Changes

As usual there's a beat or three as to why we ended up having an inexplicable outbreak of disease turning most of mankind this way - ''comeuppance for a flatlined culture'' for one - but on the whole we're looking at the hero, 'Mark Spitz', and co. And between looking at the world we're currently in, with all its new terminology that is slowly drip-dripped into our understanding, we have an almighty look at 'Mark Spitz' and his life. There are a host of relevant flashbacks as we learn what took the character from ambling round several jobs, including being the voice of a coffee franchise on a social network, to discovering the plague's initial outbreak, to surviving this far and entering such a new career.

Which all means that we have a fully realised world, and far from just gung-ho activity, we gain insight into the world Whitehead has created for himself. You can easily find a metaphor in the stragglers and their braindead sticking with a part of life that is easily dismissed when there's a proper, newly active world to re-establish. The post-apocalyptic USA is a mix of collective farms, trying to revive the corn crops, and a military sponsored by official brands, meaning none other can even be looted. This definition of a society that is clearly an ironic look at our own makes me suggest this is very much in the vein of [[Category:Chuck Palahniuk|Chuck Palahniuk]], and I think for that audience this could well be a break-out title. To its detriment is the very New York-ness of it, meaning it might not travel across the pond so successfully, and perhaps the world is a little too insular, meditative and fulfilled by lengthy flashback after all.