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A review by irreverentreader
The Living by Isaac Marion
2.0
It really pains me to rate this as I have. I tried. I tried so hard to like The Hunger, Burning World, and now The Living, but whatever magic Marion possessed to write Warm Bodies, one of my favorite books, he lost it completely going forward.
R is really what spellbound me all those years ago when I first picked up Warm Bodies. His lyricism, poetic narration, and snark really found a home with me and made me enjoy the adventure. But the other books in this series stripped away his character layer by layer until I didn't like what I saw underneath. His history, the disgusting person that he was, totally ruined his aura for me, and those facets and characteristics from his past began to leak into his current-day character. He lost his charm and charisma and turned into a "man's man" douche who labels himself as a sexual veteran in the book's one sex scene that absolutely gave me the heebie jeebies. There is a lot of uncomfortable language in that part of the book, and it's not because I'm a prude. Far from it. But I got some real gross vibes that have undercurrents of toxic masculinity .
Besides R being disappointing, the plot itself was too. Honestly, the whole secret library thing was just a bit too weird for me, and too poorly executed to make much sense. It was hard to visualize, and I found myself having to re-read to try and parse exactly what was happening. The We chapters were often clunky at times, interspersed with writing that attempted to be more literary than it actually was. In the end, I felt like a lot of it could have been cut out and the book as a whole would have made just as much sense. In the end, I left feeling exhausted by the roles of alpha males and beta females throughout. Marion tries to uphold Julie as an important character through R's words alone, but in her actions she is constantly impulsive, reckless, and frankly unintelligent.
I've already said my piece about the other characters in the book and how disappointing they were, so I won't rehash that. But basically the writing continued to decline throughout the series in nearly all facets, but especially in clarity. In the future when I return to Warm Bodies, as I know I will, I will be treating it as a standalone novel. Hopefully with some time and space, I can go back to liking who R was in the first book.
R is really what spellbound me all those years ago when I first picked up Warm Bodies. His lyricism, poetic narration, and snark really found a home with me and made me enjoy the adventure. But the other books in this series stripped away his character layer by layer until I didn't like what I saw underneath. His history, the disgusting person that he was, totally ruined his aura for me, and those facets and characteristics from his past began to leak into his current-day character. He lost his charm and charisma and turned into a "man's man" douche who labels himself as a sexual veteran in the book's one sex scene that absolutely gave me the heebie jeebies. There is a lot of uncomfortable language in that part of the book, and it's not because I'm a prude. Far from it. But I got some real gross vibes that have undercurrents of toxic masculinity .
Besides R being disappointing, the plot itself was too. Honestly, the whole secret library thing was just a bit too weird for me, and too poorly executed to make much sense. It was hard to visualize, and I found myself having to re-read to try and parse exactly what was happening. The We chapters were often clunky at times, interspersed with writing that attempted to be more literary than it actually was. In the end, I felt like a lot of it could have been cut out and the book as a whole would have made just as much sense. In the end, I left feeling exhausted by the roles of alpha males and beta females throughout. Marion tries to uphold Julie as an important character through R's words alone, but in her actions she is constantly impulsive, reckless, and frankly unintelligent.
I've already said my piece about the other characters in the book and how disappointing they were, so I won't rehash that. But basically the writing continued to decline throughout the series in nearly all facets, but especially in clarity. In the future when I return to Warm Bodies, as I know I will, I will be treating it as a standalone novel. Hopefully with some time and space, I can go back to liking who R was in the first book.