barmyjen's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
When adults start murdering children, the children must so what they can to survive. This book starts off as an interesting end of the world kind of story, and develops into one full of novel ideas that really makes you think. Very intriguing!
david_agranoff's review against another edition
4.0
Full review coming. Although it pre-dates 28 days later, hollywood would pitch this as 28 days later or the crazies meets Lord of the flies. Excellent end of the world novel with a scene near they end that disturbed me deeply. Cool book.
c0urtneyscz's review against another edition
4.0
Maybe 3.5 ⭐ the weird falling in love with every girl he met got pretty annoying and strange. But, overall I enjoyed the story!
jenniferlwatson's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
sade's review against another edition
2.0
1.5 Stars
Clark, admirably has to be said, does try to take this book in a some sort of horror direction - it definitely was a fascinating concept, but ultimately is bogged down by way too much YA tropes...insta love, poetic language
This book is YA to the CORE!! meaning you spend a shit load of time reading through a teenager's thoughts that come of in a somewhat poetic form. For some weird reason hard core YA writers have this insane need to qualify every action with poetic like words, like as if for some reason the reader will be unable to understand the depth of emotion if this isn't used.
"Memories of the drive come back to me now. Bright and hard but somehow broken and disconnected".
"Baz stared at the blood. Fresh and red and wet".
I know some people don't mind this, but ultimately it's not a form of writing that i've been able to grow to love.
Is it hard core YA if characters don't fall in love??? Imagine a hard core YA novel, with 2 teenage characters and no love story in the works. The HORROR!!! How dare you put 2 teenagers of the opposite sex together and not make them see the stars in each other's eyes.. HOW DARE YOU!!!! This is YA goddammit!!!
I imagine every hard core YA writer has this thought and well voila insta love is born...
and the final nail in the coffin of this book, explaining the horror.
I'm more amused than upset (ok fine, fine, i am a little bit upset) with the direction this book went when it came to this part of this book. It was unbelievably laughable. The book basically uses
Spoiler
Freud's theory of consciousness to explain away the horrors. When you think of it, it's actually quite clever, my problem as someone who has spent almost all her higher educational years using social theories to write essays is that we all know using one theory to explain the universe in social sciences is beyond simplistic and so wrong. You know that just because one theory is well liked doesn't mean social theorists still can't poke so much holes in it, it'll leave your head spinning. Also i'm pretty sure Freud theory of consciousness doesn't mean you'll start acting like a zombieOther random peeves were the names of the chapter which 9 out of 10 times had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the chapter. Also, what i can only describe as
Spoiler
gratuitous sex scenesI can't in all honesty say there was anything to love about this book. It was so unbelievably lukewarm..
rovertoak's review against another edition
5.0
I paid a pretty penny for a somewhat beat-up copy of this book and I'll tell you...I'd have paid three times as much knowing what I know now about Blood Crazy. It's 28 Days Later, Lord of the Flies, Jung's [b: The Undiscovered Self|67891|The Undiscovered Self|Carl Gustav Jung|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388255319s/67891.jpg|119037], [b: Origin of the Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941], and Braveheart expertly collided with the force of a ten megaton bomb.
The novel begins with confusion and plenty of gory action, as 17-year-old Nick Aten (rhymes with Satan) begins to notice strange goings on. The adult population has become murderously insane, preying on anyone under the age of 20. There's plenty of fear and close calls as Nick collects other teens on his desperate journey to safety. The group stumbles on a community of other kids and teens looking to rebuild society from scratch by organizing, scavenging, and defending against the hordes of adult attackers. Many good zombie/apocalyptic novels include elements similar to these and come to satisfying, if not at times hopeless, finales. Instead, Simon Clark sends Nick Aten further, on a hero's quest nothing short of Tolkienesque in its breadth and duration.
Without spoiling this novel for readers who end up spending some decent coin for this read, know that there is much substance lurking once the reader has gotten the details of the apocalypse out of the way. This book offers the gift of hope to its characters...and readers...and gives us good reason not to trust anyone over the age of TWENTY!
The novel begins with confusion and plenty of gory action, as 17-year-old Nick Aten (rhymes with Satan) begins to notice strange goings on. The adult population has become murderously insane, preying on anyone under the age of 20. There's plenty of fear and close calls as Nick collects other teens on his desperate journey to safety. The group stumbles on a community of other kids and teens looking to rebuild society from scratch by organizing, scavenging, and defending against the hordes of adult attackers. Many good zombie/apocalyptic novels include elements similar to these and come to satisfying, if not at times hopeless, finales. Instead, Simon Clark sends Nick Aten further, on a hero's quest nothing short of Tolkienesque in its breadth and duration.
Without spoiling this novel for readers who end up spending some decent coin for this read, know that there is much substance lurking once the reader has gotten the details of the apocalypse out of the way. This book offers the gift of hope to its characters...and readers...and gives us good reason not to trust anyone over the age of TWENTY!
xterminal's review
4.0
Simon Clark, Blood Crazy (Leisure, 1995)
How this book gets characterized as a young adult novel is completely beyond me. Hey, folks: just because a novel's protagonist is under twenty-one years of age does not make a novel aimed at the young adult market.
Nick Aten ("rhymes with Satan") goes to bed one night convinced that all is right with the world. He wakes up the next morning and finds out how terribly wrong he is; something has caused all of the world's adults to go crazy and start killing their children. Those who have no children just go after everyone under a certain age (undetermined at the beginning of the book). Needless to say, the children are not altogether happy with this. Nick escapes and heads out of town, banding together with various other survivors against millions of people whose whole goal is their destruction.
In other words, it's your basic post-apocalyptic novel. And from that perspective, it's a good enough read. It's hard to review this objectively, since I had it marketed to me as a young adult novel; it reads like an adult novel, and so I'm concerned my ideas about it are going to cross one line or the other, since the two are often entirely different animals. Thankfully, it's a decent book as both, though a little on the adult side for being a YA read.
Simon Clark has a good sense of the dramatic, and the book is paced and plotted well. Granted, postapocalyptic lit is fast becoming its own subgenre, and it's not too hard to plot these days (a reading of The Stand, a reading of Swan Song, and a screening of The Omega Man, and you're pretty much set; elements of all three show up here, of course). His characters are for the most part solid and well-built, with a few cardboard-esque exceptions. The main reason, I'm guessing, this was thought to be a YA novel is the Nick Aten's narrative voice, which is naïve; too much so at times. (One wonders why that's still considered a YA trait, given the popularity of the romance genre.)
Readable, fast-paced, and worthwhile for horror fans. *** ½
How this book gets characterized as a young adult novel is completely beyond me. Hey, folks: just because a novel's protagonist is under twenty-one years of age does not make a novel aimed at the young adult market.
Nick Aten ("rhymes with Satan") goes to bed one night convinced that all is right with the world. He wakes up the next morning and finds out how terribly wrong he is; something has caused all of the world's adults to go crazy and start killing their children. Those who have no children just go after everyone under a certain age (undetermined at the beginning of the book). Needless to say, the children are not altogether happy with this. Nick escapes and heads out of town, banding together with various other survivors against millions of people whose whole goal is their destruction.
In other words, it's your basic post-apocalyptic novel. And from that perspective, it's a good enough read. It's hard to review this objectively, since I had it marketed to me as a young adult novel; it reads like an adult novel, and so I'm concerned my ideas about it are going to cross one line or the other, since the two are often entirely different animals. Thankfully, it's a decent book as both, though a little on the adult side for being a YA read.
Simon Clark has a good sense of the dramatic, and the book is paced and plotted well. Granted, postapocalyptic lit is fast becoming its own subgenre, and it's not too hard to plot these days (a reading of The Stand, a reading of Swan Song, and a screening of The Omega Man, and you're pretty much set; elements of all three show up here, of course). His characters are for the most part solid and well-built, with a few cardboard-esque exceptions. The main reason, I'm guessing, this was thought to be a YA novel is the Nick Aten's narrative voice, which is naïve; too much so at times. (One wonders why that's still considered a YA trait, given the popularity of the romance genre.)
Readable, fast-paced, and worthwhile for horror fans. *** ½
rovertoak's review
5.0
I paid a pretty penny for a somewhat beat-up copy of this book and I'll tell you...I'd have paid three times as much knowing what I know now about Blood Crazy. It's 28 Days Later, Lord of the Flies, Jung's [b: The Undiscovered Self|67891|The Undiscovered Self|Carl Gustav Jung|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388255319s/67891.jpg|119037], [b: Origin of the Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941], and Braveheart expertly collided with the force of a ten megaton bomb.
The novel begins with confusion and plenty of gory action, as 17-year-old Nick Aten (rhymes with Satan) begins to notice strange goings on. The adult population has become murderously insane, preying on anyone under the age of 20. There's plenty of fear and close calls as Nick collects other teens on his desperate journey to safety. The group stumbles on a community of other kids and teens looking to rebuild society from scratch by organizing, scavenging, and defending against the hordes of adult attackers. Many good zombie/apocalyptic novels include elements similar to these and come to satisfying, if not at times hopeless, finales. Instead, Simon Clark sends Nick Aten further, on a hero's quest nothing short of Tolkienesque in its breadth and duration.
Without spoiling this novel for readers who end up spending some decent coin for this read, know that there is much substance lurking once the reader has gotten the details of the apocalypse out of the way. This book offers the gift of hope to its characters...and readers...and gives us good reason not to trust anyone over the age of TWENTY!
The novel begins with confusion and plenty of gory action, as 17-year-old Nick Aten (rhymes with Satan) begins to notice strange goings on. The adult population has become murderously insane, preying on anyone under the age of 20. There's plenty of fear and close calls as Nick collects other teens on his desperate journey to safety. The group stumbles on a community of other kids and teens looking to rebuild society from scratch by organizing, scavenging, and defending against the hordes of adult attackers. Many good zombie/apocalyptic novels include elements similar to these and come to satisfying, if not at times hopeless, finales. Instead, Simon Clark sends Nick Aten further, on a hero's quest nothing short of Tolkienesque in its breadth and duration.
Without spoiling this novel for readers who end up spending some decent coin for this read, know that there is much substance lurking once the reader has gotten the details of the apocalypse out of the way. This book offers the gift of hope to its characters...and readers...and gives us good reason not to trust anyone over the age of TWENTY!
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