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A review by ratgrrrl
Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman
2.0
This has been a ride. Ultimately, an unpleasant one.
I thoroughly enjoy the way Malerman writes. There's a machinegun staccato of short, punchy sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. It's engaging and engrossing and hard to put down. It's inspiring and infectious.
I absolutely adore Bird Box and Malorie, for different reasons, and plan to read everything Malerman has written. I am not letting this put me off, but it has made me recalibrate my expectations.
I liked the initial concept of a devastating, unknown noise and the tension between the army wanting to own it and the rock band they sent to find it.
Pretty much everything else in this book, in my incredibly humble and ignorant opinion, for want of a more erudite and respectful word, sucked!
This is Malerman as bad Stephen King. Self insert fan fiction musician protagonist and everything. The army hospital is cartoonishly evil and reeks of King's Institute, but with added 'Americans in Squid Game' and an even more cartoonishly, ludicrously one dimensional 'mad' doctor.
There is zero depth to any character here and a sprinkling of insta-love to really spice things up. Obviously, the love interest has a vaguely relevant tragic backstory that is painfully obviously set up and paid off in the most miniscule and artificially inflated tension towards the climax.
A great deal of the is book takes place in and revolves around the Danib desert in Africa, but African people barely exist in the story. There's a guide and the tragic backstory of his wife. That's pretty much it. This book came out in 2017, and while it isn't horrendously racist, it's not not racist, and seems to have been considered from a post colonial perspective about as much as the late 50s in which it's set.
The central thesis, and it does very explicitly and very clumsily announce and tell its thesis, is that war, war never changes and war bad. Creation is better. But creation also dangerous.
I really wanted to like this. I consider myself a bit of a Malerman fangal, I like how he writes, and I was intrigued at first, but it just kept losing me along the way. I felt as if it kept bringing me back and my updates on here say as much, but this has nowhere enough nutritional value or flavour or anything to be as eeked out and stretched for so long.
The tragedy is that this really could have been something, but it's not even half baked. This needed so very much more cooking and should have almost definitely been a short story that eschewed pretty much everything in the hospital. Nothing about the hospital resonates (badum tish) or makes sense in actuality or thematically, beyond US military/ government bad--absolutely indeed they are bad, but so is this while half of the book.
The themes and imagery also fall flat in an M. Night Shyamalan-esque, dressed up for the big job at the meaning and metaphor factory, but wearing absolutely nothing under that trenchcoat of pretention. Again, the imagery is all American baybee! Which, fine, the author and protagonist are American, but Africa is used as a politically, socially, and historically neutral setting that is solely the birthplace of humanity...It's truly wild that the magic of creation discovered under the dunes of Danib that has a lot to say about war and conjuring ghosts from conflicts across time and space has NOTHING to say about Africa...
Ultimately, there are some nuggets of what could be some really interesting stuff to explore and Malerman's prose is effective, but this ends up being some real mid Stephen King fanfiction with big JJ Abrams Mystery Box nonsense. Look, I love King, Lost, and Malerman, but this...really sucked.
If you pick up this book, you will not believe this review. The opening is really impressive and Malerman is a magician with prose and slight of hand. You might even get to right near the end and tell your partner about the story and that you want to give it a four, despite the perplexed look they give you. But once you finish, you will likely feel just as exasperated and deflated.
Honestly, the more I think about this book, the more I hate it. I can't go lower than two because I do like Malerman's writing and I was inspired to try to write in his style and came up with a a fun idea for a story, and I am truly appreciative for that.
But yeah...this sucks.
I thoroughly enjoy the way Malerman writes. There's a machinegun staccato of short, punchy sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. It's engaging and engrossing and hard to put down. It's inspiring and infectious.
I absolutely adore Bird Box and Malorie, for different reasons, and plan to read everything Malerman has written. I am not letting this put me off, but it has made me recalibrate my expectations.
I liked the initial concept of a devastating, unknown noise and the tension between the army wanting to own it and the rock band they sent to find it.
Pretty much everything else in this book, in my incredibly humble and ignorant opinion, for want of a more erudite and respectful word, sucked!
This is Malerman as bad Stephen King. Self insert fan fiction musician protagonist and everything. The army hospital is cartoonishly evil and reeks of King's Institute, but with added 'Americans in Squid Game' and an even more cartoonishly, ludicrously one dimensional 'mad' doctor.
There is zero depth to any character here and a sprinkling of insta-love to really spice things up. Obviously, the love interest has a vaguely relevant tragic backstory that is painfully obviously set up and paid off in the most miniscule and artificially inflated tension towards the climax.
A great deal of the is book takes place in and revolves around the Danib desert in Africa, but African people barely exist in the story. There's a guide and the tragic backstory of his wife. That's pretty much it. This book came out in 2017, and while it isn't horrendously racist, it's not not racist, and seems to have been considered from a post colonial perspective about as much as the late 50s in which it's set.
The central thesis, and it does very explicitly and very clumsily announce and tell its thesis, is that war, war never changes and war bad. Creation is better. But creation also dangerous.
I really wanted to like this. I consider myself a bit of a Malerman fangal, I like how he writes, and I was intrigued at first, but it just kept losing me along the way. I felt as if it kept bringing me back and my updates on here say as much, but this has nowhere enough nutritional value or flavour or anything to be as eeked out and stretched for so long.
The tragedy is that this really could have been something, but it's not even half baked. This needed so very much more cooking and should have almost definitely been a short story that eschewed pretty much everything in the hospital. Nothing about the hospital resonates (badum tish) or makes sense in actuality or thematically, beyond US military/ government bad--absolutely indeed they are bad, but so is this while half of the book.
The themes and imagery also fall flat in an M. Night Shyamalan-esque, dressed up for the big job at the meaning and metaphor factory, but wearing absolutely nothing under that trenchcoat of pretention. Again, the imagery is all American baybee! Which, fine, the author and protagonist are American, but Africa is used as a politically, socially, and historically neutral setting that is solely the birthplace of humanity...It's truly wild that the magic of creation discovered under the dunes of Danib that has a lot to say about war and conjuring ghosts from conflicts across time and space has NOTHING to say about Africa...
Ultimately, there are some nuggets of what could be some really interesting stuff to explore and Malerman's prose is effective, but this ends up being some real mid Stephen King fanfiction with big JJ Abrams Mystery Box nonsense. Look, I love King, Lost, and Malerman, but this...really sucked.
If you pick up this book, you will not believe this review. The opening is really impressive and Malerman is a magician with prose and slight of hand. You might even get to right near the end and tell your partner about the story and that you want to give it a four, despite the perplexed look they give you. But once you finish, you will likely feel just as exasperated and deflated.
Honestly, the more I think about this book, the more I hate it. I can't go lower than two because I do like Malerman's writing and I was inspired to try to write in his style and came up with a a fun idea for a story, and I am truly appreciative for that.
But yeah...this sucks.