This was my second foray into Simon Clark, and while Blood Crazy was certainly better than The Tower - which would rank among my top 3 worst horror novels I've ever read - I had much higher hopes for this one.
The basic premise is an end-of-the-world story, but with the twist that all adults are killing kids. Specifically their kids. Everyone above the age of 18 has gone crazy, and later termed a Creosote. All those 18 or below are still perfectly normal.
Enter our narrator, Nick Aten, a typical teenage male with no real aspirations. After finding his brother's mutilated corpse, he finds himself on the run from his parents (and all adults in general). Unfortunately, what could have been a promising plot turns into Nick wandering aimlessly around from one place to another, and even returning to the same places he's just run from - and doing it multiple times! Almost the entire book can be summarized like this;
Nick runs from Creosotes. Nick hides out/meets fellow survivors. Creosotes show up. Nick runs from Creosotes. Nick hides out/meets fellow survivors. Creosotes show up. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It reads like some of the more mediocre Laymon novels, where characters wander around a lot, but nothing much happens. And near the end, when we finally see what made the adults go crazy, the already non-existent plot comes to such a screeching halt, it almost goes into reverse. 40 straight pages, yes 40!!!, of convoluted dialogue trying to explain what is really a rather simple theory. And even better, this explanation completely contradicts the actions from the first 300 pages! After this mind-numbing explanation, we get a quick yet incomplete conclusion. Not that I cared by that point.
Also, our hero Nick falls helplessly in love with a girl named Sarah - yet proceeds to sleep with two other girls during the course of the novel while he's trying to get back to her. This makes it rather difficult for me to feel much emotion for Nick and Sarah when they're reunited, not to mention makes him look like an ass.
As can easily be guessed, I was not a fan of this novel at all - which doesn't bode well for any future readings of Clark, as some here have said this is actually one of his best novels.
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