Kokopu Dreams by Chris Baker
Jan. 10th, 2011 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zeborah posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_pocNew Zealand post-apocalyptic sf/fantasy: rabbit calicivirus has mutated and devastated the population of New Zealand while the rest of the world has succumbed to ebola. I love the early chapters especially for the way the communities get on with what's necessary to survive - this is no libertarian fantasy; people need each other. (It is a bit of a back-to-nature fantasy, otoh. One day I must write a post-apocalypse in which everyone realises that going back to nature sucks big time and desperately works to maintain as much technology as possible.) The black humour rang very true as well.
It did still have the "Manly men must protect themselves from packs of dogs and gangs of irredeemably bad guys" trope in abundance. Women were mostly there to proffer sage advice, be traumatised, get raped, and eventually marry and procreate. Speaking of procreation, the psychology behind the "After a huge population decline everyone has sex like bunnies" thing seemed way off - it was treated like an involuntary biological impulse, something akin to diarrhea; rather than being a comfort, a pleasure, a brief escape from horror, it's seen as a phase that they're hoping they'll get over as soon as possible.
On a broader scale, the supernatural cause behind the outbreak of the virus never felt adequately explained. It was all very vague from the start, but there I accepted it assuming the mystery would be explored and made clear. We did learn some, but I never thought we learned enough for the protagonist to be able to complete his quest and I couldn't even work out what he did do or why it worked. To be fair, the rules are different with faeries so this might just be my own ignorance of the Maeroero. But in a way this was actually almost a bit more travelogue-shaped than quest-shaped and reading it that way might be more satisfying.
It did still have the "Manly men must protect themselves from packs of dogs and gangs of irredeemably bad guys" trope in abundance. Women were mostly there to proffer sage advice, be traumatised, get raped, and eventually marry and procreate. Speaking of procreation, the psychology behind the "After a huge population decline everyone has sex like bunnies" thing seemed way off - it was treated like an involuntary biological impulse, something akin to diarrhea; rather than being a comfort, a pleasure, a brief escape from horror, it's seen as a phase that they're hoping they'll get over as soon as possible.
On a broader scale, the supernatural cause behind the outbreak of the virus never felt adequately explained. It was all very vague from the start, but there I accepted it assuming the mystery would be explored and made clear. We did learn some, but I never thought we learned enough for the protagonist to be able to complete his quest and I couldn't even work out what he did do or why it worked. To be fair, the rules are different with faeries so this might just be my own ignorance of the Maeroero. But in a way this was actually almost a bit more travelogue-shaped than quest-shaped and reading it that way might be more satisfying.
