Reviews with content warning for Animal death - City of Ash and Red

I want to preface by saying there are a lot of content warnings and I will list them in that section in full.

A nameless protagonist, referred to only as "the man", works for a pest extermination company. He is transferred to Country C which is in the middle of an epidemic and he is immediately quarantined. Country C is massively polluted with foul smelling air, trash everywhere and overrun with rodents. While in quarantine he reminisces about his failed marriage, his dog and the time he killed a rat. He gets some horrifying news which leads him to flee his apartment and experience homelessness as his life spirals out of control.

This book had one of the most despicable protagonists I have read in a while. He is a rapist, an abuser, and has zero qualms about doing whatever necessary for his self preservation. He made me think of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. To be fair everyone in this book was pretty awful. The descriptions are quite gruesome, and the way homelessness and those experiencing it werw depicted didn't sit right with me. This book is a look at how truly rock bottom a society gets when everyone is out for themselves and not the greater good. It was even more sad and creepy how much of this book, written in 2010, echoed our current situation in many ways.

Content Warnings

sarah984's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Parts of this book were really interesting: being in a foreign country where you barely speak the language when something momentous starts happening, trying to navigate the bureaucracy at the company, the full circle story about the rat. But overall not very much happened and every time something came up about a woman it was awful.

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