The bugs will go through anything to eat metal, self-replicate, and have completely devastated the western seaboard of the United States. Kimble livesThe bugs will go through anything to eat metal, self-replicate, and have completely devastated the western seaboard of the United States. Kimble lives in the now metal-barren Territory and builds a life after his abusive father with an Aikido instructor.
I really enjoyed this book. The pace was great, the characters were interesting. I wasn't enthralled to the point of un-put-down-able but the premise was engrosing.
However, there was more than one spot in the narrative where sections of time are skipped and there's NO indication this has happened. The beginning of the story the main character is 13, by the end he's at least 18 and leaving for college but at no point is there a clear sign that significant time (ie: more than a day) has passed.
Second, and related, there's more than one spot where I felt an entire swath of story was simply missing from the narrative. At one point in particular the main character is sparring in the dojo and there's a single line refering to passing out due to being hit by a whip. This came out of nowhere and had no relation to the paragraph which preceded it. I re-read the previous page just to make sure I wasn't skipping anything. The whip event in question is later recounted in enough detail that I was certain I had skipped an entire chapter of story- no such chapter exists. I don't know if it was written and removed (that's what I feel) or just poorly hinted at and later detailed, but I was bothered and confused.
Don't allow these two details to stop you from reading the book, however. I still consider it 5 star worthy and an excellent afternoon read.
***SPOILER ALERT! STOP READING HERE!!***
***SPOILER ALERT! STOP READING HERE!!***
The end of the novel closes with Kimble going to college and talking with a federal agent that he spent much of the book working with. It's reveiled that the bugs are believed to be alien in origin. There was NOTHING in the ENTIRE book that would possibly lead to this conclusion. It came out of nowhere and utterly knocked me out of the story. Up until that point I was honestly curious about the bug problem. Now I'm just disappointed. 'They're all actually aliens' is almost as bad as 'it was all a dream.'...more
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