paulopaperbooksonly's review against another edition
4.0
This was a book that took me a while to read. It's not because is not interesting but because from the second half of the novel it drags a little and it's the same thing over and over again.
Basiclly the plot is a apocalpytic fiction but not the usual types out there. It was not a war, a plague, alien influence, divine action or something like that. It all begins with grass.
Indeed, grass. Bermuda Grass for that matter.
We have here, a new experiment straight from the lab. It grows greener than green and will be the envy of all your neighbours. Nothing can destroy it so it will always be beautiful and green. Would you care to have it sir?
If you said yes, then you doomed mankind. Because as it says... it grows and grows and nothing can destroy it. It thrives on everything, it eats everything in its path. This is the plot. How mankind tries to battle this devil bermuda grass.
The characters are few and underdeveloped. Most of the time we are being told what the grass did or what the masses, armies and such are trying to do to stop the grass from engulfing first california then after a couple of years USA and North America, South America then the world. I am not saying nothing that the synopsis don't tell.
Besides the repiteve My main problem with this book was the making of the characters. Besides our main character everyone is a stereotype of person/group. The woman scientist, african-american, the military, the goverment, the newspaper editor and our main character - a salesman turn into the bigest most important person on earth. The only character that is quite singular is a reporter, who is also a magician and every time he talks he talks with a different Accent. Also, everyone has some satyrical tone to them...
Some prejudice in this book is also in order...
"A woman scientist, ay? Funny things women'll do when they can't get a man. But long-bearded or flat chested it's all the same. Gruesome, that's what they are, gruesome. Forget it."
One of the most interesting is the way the editor talk... it remembers some editor from some series...
"Gootes, you are the end-product of a long line of incestuous idiots, the winner of the booby prize in any intelligence test, but you have done yourself in bringing me this vermionus and maggoty ordure" said Le ffaçase, throwing my efforts to the fllor and kicking at them. The outrage made me boil and if he had not been an older man I might have done him an injury. " As for you, Weener, I doubt if you will ever be elevated to the ranks of idiocy. Get the sanguinary hell out of here and do humanity a favor to step in front of the first truck driving by."
"What the hell's this?" "By the balls of Benjamim Franklin and the little white fringe on Horace Greenley's chin, this goddamned thing's been wrote by hand! Aren't there any typewriters anymore? Did Mister Remington commit suicide unbeknownst to me?"
"You're a syncophant, Gootes, a miserable groveling lowlivered cringing fawning mealymouthed chickenhearted toadeating arse-licking , slobering syncophant."
This guy made me laugh.
These book deserves three stars but with all those and many more monologues I raised it to four.
Advisable? Well, it was written before the fifties so expect some prejudices, but if you want to read one of the first books on the subject end of the world then jump in. Don't expect a masterwork but it will be a fun ride, but a bit repetitive...
Basiclly the plot is a apocalpytic fiction but not the usual types out there. It was not a war, a plague, alien influence, divine action or something like that. It all begins with grass.
Indeed, grass. Bermuda Grass for that matter.
We have here, a new experiment straight from the lab. It grows greener than green and will be the envy of all your neighbours. Nothing can destroy it so it will always be beautiful and green. Would you care to have it sir?
If you said yes, then you doomed mankind. Because as it says... it grows and grows and nothing can destroy it. It thrives on everything, it eats everything in its path. This is the plot. How mankind tries to battle this devil bermuda grass.
The characters are few and underdeveloped. Most of the time we are being told what the grass did or what the masses, armies and such are trying to do to stop the grass from engulfing first california then after a couple of years USA and North America, South America then the world. I am not saying nothing that the synopsis don't tell.
Besides the repiteve My main problem with this book was the making of the characters. Besides our main character everyone is a stereotype of person/group. The woman scientist, african-american, the military, the goverment, the newspaper editor and our main character - a salesman turn into the bigest most important person on earth. The only character that is quite singular is a reporter, who is also a magician and every time he talks he talks with a different Accent. Also, everyone has some satyrical tone to them...
Some prejudice in this book is also in order...
"A woman scientist, ay? Funny things women'll do when they can't get a man. But long-bearded or flat chested it's all the same. Gruesome, that's what they are, gruesome. Forget it."
One of the most interesting is the way the editor talk... it remembers some editor from some series...
"Gootes, you are the end-product of a long line of incestuous idiots, the winner of the booby prize in any intelligence test, but you have done yourself in bringing me this vermionus and maggoty ordure" said Le ffaçase, throwing my efforts to the fllor and kicking at them. The outrage made me boil and if he had not been an older man I might have done him an injury. " As for you, Weener, I doubt if you will ever be elevated to the ranks of idiocy. Get the sanguinary hell out of here and do humanity a favor to step in front of the first truck driving by."
"What the hell's this?" "By the balls of Benjamim Franklin and the little white fringe on Horace Greenley's chin, this goddamned thing's been wrote by hand! Aren't there any typewriters anymore? Did Mister Remington commit suicide unbeknownst to me?"
"You're a syncophant, Gootes, a miserable groveling lowlivered cringing fawning mealymouthed chickenhearted toadeating arse-licking , slobering syncophant."
This guy made me laugh.
These book deserves three stars but with all those and many more monologues I raised it to four.
Advisable? Well, it was written before the fifties so expect some prejudices, but if you want to read one of the first books on the subject end of the world then jump in. Don't expect a masterwork but it will be a fun ride, but a bit repetitive...
nekokat's review against another edition
1.0
Entirely too Vonnegut for me. Depressing, political, moralizing, and full to the brim with characters that not only failed to inspire the least bit of empathy, but actively annoyed and/or repulsed -- and this includes the narrator, a small-minded, self-congratulatory idiot I loathed within the first few pages. As if to add insult to injury, the author threw in weird conceits, like omitting apostrophes from contractions and hyphens from compound words, and including a character who constantly switched from one cliched caricature of an accent to another. As a short story it might have been tolerable -- as a 320-page novel it was about 300 pages too long.
timartin's review
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
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