Together in a Broken World: an unfinished apocalypse

 

I am excited! So, today I’m talking about Together in a Broken World by Paul Michael Winters which is actually an arc I received. That is precisely why I’m excited because I think this might be the very first time that I’ve gotten an arc. I was sent an email basically pitching me the book and then asking if they were able to send me an arc for review ahead of the book’s release, so I said yes. And before I forget, this book is slated for release on May 21^st, 2024. Thank you to Paul Michael Winters, and Kourtney Jason from Pacific & Court for sending me the arc.

For transparency, I was sent this book for free, but I’m not getting paid to make this post, nor is there any kind of contract. And I think I want to do this a bit more structured than I normally do my posts. Normally I just sort of ramble in a book report-y kind of way, but with this one, I want to actively say what I liked, then disliked about it, then conclude.

The blurb says that seventeen-year-old Zach was visiting his uncle in a small Montana town when a mysterious illness ripped through the world. Most died, but those who survived the infection became mindless killers, spreading the disease with a single scratch. Now, a year later, civilisation lies in ruins, and Zach is the town’s sole survivor. Desperately lonely, he longs to return to his family in Seattle, but his fears hold him captive. Eighteen-year-old Aiden is on a critical mission for the covert scientific collective, delivering vials whose contents could cure the infection. Tortured by his boyfriend’s death, he welcomes the risk of the perilous journey. When a militia attacks Aiden, he flees to Zach’s town. The boys escape together and soon form a bond as they comfort each other in this desolate and broken world. The farther they travel, the more their affection grows, as do the forces pulling them apart. But their greatest threats are the secrets they keep. Zach hides details of his uncle’s death, and Aiden conceals the vials’ sinister origins. In order to survive, they’ll have to confront the truths that could tear their love apart.

There’s also a content warning that was included in the book, so I’ll share that. This book contains sexual language and content that is fade-to-black, which may only be suitable for mature readers. Depictions of graphic violence, guns, abduction, death of family, mourning; discussions of attempted rape/non-con (past, off page), social anxiety, and past and present trauma.

Chapter one sees Aiden driving with the vials in his car, and immediately something I noticed, he was blasting EDM music in his car (because he used to be a DJ lol). So when he was blasting, that did make me think, wouldn’t someone hear him? From the off, I was expecting something bad to happen to him. He ends up getting run off the road and mentions he’s having dreams of seeing his boyfriend die. We then pop over to Zach who has holed himself up in the bank of the little town he’s in. You see he’s set up a bunch of defences around to keep everything out. One of the infected ends up barrelling into town. They’re not quite zombies, but they’ve lost their humanity. Eventually, the two run into each other, and they seem to judge that the other is okay, and Aiden offers basically himself to help around town in exchange for some supplies. Aiden ends up leaving Zach, thinking he needs to be alone, then realises he may well have just put Zach in danger so decides to go back and take him with him.

You find out that the infection was man-made in the first, giving very Dead Rising core. I do think this book coming into my possession at the same time I was playing Dead Rising 4 was really lucky, because I’ve been able to make that connection. With the infection being man-made, I immediately wanted to know, “Ooh, why has it been made? Is it some kind of scientific group with bad intentions for it?” I could definitely feel a similarity between this book and the Dead Rising or The Last of Us games. I realise the two of those have very different vibes, but they’re both apocalyptic. I could see this more sitting as a Last of Us kind of deal as the whole vibe of this book felt more about a journey. So, in a way, it was kind of like the Fallout games as well.

I really liked the setup for a lot of the locations. Elk Springs in the beginning was a good one, because even though we don’t spend all that long there, I got a really good idea of what the place was like from the off, and with the bank that Zach lived in especially, even if the idea that Winters had in his mind wasn’t the same as the one I made up, I was still able to get a vision of what this small town bank looks like. I have to say, that’s my favourite kind of setup for a location, one that gives you just enough information that you get an idea, but where you can fill in the blanks yourself. It was the same for this farmstead that the boys found themselves at later in the book. Yes, I was handed bits and pieces, but I was able to fill in bits to make my own view of the place.

There were moments where it felt like Winters perhaps needed to trust the readers more. One specific example I have is on page 105 and it’s a little passage that reads, “It makes me want to punch the wall. Except punching the wall of a log cabin would probably hurt a lot. Geez, I’m even overanalyzing my emotional outbursts.” And it was bits like that last sentence that I felt like could have been cut. As readers, especially in the context and setup of this scene, we understand that Aiden and Zach are spending the night in a log cabin, and as basic an analogy it is, obviously punching wood as just a normal person is going to hurt, we don’t need to be told that. On top of that, I think that taking out that last bit would have allowed a bit of Zach’s personality to shine through. My main point is that there were a bunch of points throughout the book where it felt like Winters was explaining what was going on, the context, and even emotions, which I get, because you want your readers to understand, but you need to be able to trust that readers will understand what’s going on. I felt like so many sentences to just make the book feel and flow so much smoother.

There were also some just downright weird bits in the book too. One example is when Zach and Aiden are travelling, they meet this woman called Jo who lives in an amusement park and has started fixing things up. And it was either as they were leaving, or when Jo wasn’t around, one of the boys mentions how they thought Jo was autistic, and then the other mentions how they had a cousin that had autism and they got the same vibe. I’m all for autistic representation, but this passage felt so out of place in this book, because the boys basically just said, “Hey, I think Jo was autistic”, “So, did I”, and then moved on with life. It was so weird, like, why did it need to be included? If Jo was meant to be autistic, the characters didn’t need to call attention to it, she could have just had the traits, and that could have been it. It calls back to wanting Winters to trust the readers, because it felt like Jo went off screen, and then there was a narrator that just said, “And by the way, Jo was autistic. Okay, next thing!”

The dialogue definitely felt awkward at times too. It was like an idea of what needed to be said was written down, but then was forgotten to be edited to add the characters’ voices in. Everything that people said was definitely all words, it just felt like the words didn’t particularly belong to anyone and were just said to move the book along. I think it was at its worst when Aiden and Zach would be talking to each other and neither of the two had any quirks to the way they spoke, and both spoke in the exact same words-on-a-page kind of tone. As someone who is pursuing traditional publishing, and studied Creative Writing, I know how much work goes into writing a novel (I’m querying my own novel), and I definitely feel bad saying this, but this book just didn’t feel finished to me. The best way I can describe it is that the content and ideas were all there, they just hadn’t been refined into the best versions of themselves. With the characters, it was like the dialogue was there to say, “Okay, this is what they need to say”, but it was then never edited to give them distinguishable personalities. For Aiden and Zach specifically, besides liking Star Wars and The Beatles, I felt like they never really had much to their personalities.

Overall, I’m very conflicted about this book. There definitely were bits that I liked about it, and undoubtedly a lot of work went into it. But I can’t ignore the bits where this book was lacking, particularly in the dialogue and the fact that the book, to me, just felt unfinished.

Okay, bye!