Green Tsunami
Laura Cooney and L.L. Soares
Smart Rhino Publications (May 19, 2014)
Reviewed by Carson Buckingham
L.L. Soares and his wife, Laura Cooney, in a major departure from the exemplary horror fiction we’ve come to expect, have presented us with a remarkable surrealistic novella.
The premise is that the Earth has been swept by an organic green tidal wave that has eliminated most of civilization pretty much overnight, altered what it didn’t kill, and changed some inanimate objects to an animated state. The metamorphosis is Kafka-esque, but much more far-reaching.
Among the few humans left is an unhappily married couple, Aaron and Joy. When the green tsunami hit, Joy was at her office and Aaron was at home. Their son, David, was at school. Though all three survived, they underwent horrific physical changes, as did all of the handful of survivors. The entire book is a series of emails (electricity is still on, but sporadic) between Aaron and Joy, with Aaron trying desperately to find and rescue his wife. It isn’t easy, because the once familiar city is so modified that finding anything or anyone is difficult, if not impossible.
I expect that this style serves the authors well on several levels. First of all, who doesn’t like to read others’ mail? The book is a fast read, the emails acting as a sort of shorthand to just get the facts out to the reader without going all Dostoyevsky about it. And it is effective. It’s a wonderful way to get to know both the protagonists, as well as their absent son, almost immediately. The reader is swept up into the story on the first page and isn’t let go until the last. The book was neither too short nor too long, but absolutely the perfect length—a difficult feat for a novella of this nature.
Green Tsunami about what happens when nature takes the planet back, and is out for revenge while it’s at it; where humans become extraneous at best and food at worst. You’ll think twice before you step on a bug or pull up a weed after you read this, believe me.
I’ve never been much of a surrealist/bizarro fan, but this amazing novella has opened my eyes and changed my mind. Bravo.
Though this book was released in 2014, as far as I am concerned, it can’t get enough publicity. And once you read this, you’ll want to read other books by this author, two others of which I have reviewed on this site. You just might discover a new favorite author here.
5 stars.
