Year Zero

by Robert Reid and Rob Reid

[cornerfolds]

I received this book in a First Reads giveaway and really had no idea what to expect when I got it out of the mailbox. It had an alien wearing headphones on the cover... I read the back and realized that this is totally not my style. Still, I felt an obligation to the author to give it a go (he gave me a free copy of his book, after all).

Right from the start, the reader has to be up to date with every musical performer from the 70s until today. As a child raised in the 90s, I have no idea what most of these references even are. For anyone who doesn't know who the stars of the 90s and early 00s are, keeping up will be quite difficult as well. I cannot imagine this will be on too many shelves in 20 years.

The story itself seemed a little hurried and even sporadic. The characters didn't really keep me interested and the style of writing reminded me of an elementary school student's short story - then this happened, and then that happened, etc. I gave up on the footnotes about halfway through.

I'm giving it three stars purely because of the shock value. I was constantly like, "what just happened?" The parrot, for instance... Year Zero was somewhat entertaining and I did get through it very quickly just to see what sort of randomness would happen next, but I definitely wouldn't read it again.

This review can also be found at Cornerfolds.com.