I will readily admit that what initially attracted me to Marcus Alexander Hart's The Oblivion Society was its cover. How could I resist a cartoonishly cute redhead girl with dark glasses, red sneakers, a torn LBD (li'l black dress, that is) and black bat wings riding a bomb ala Slim Pickins in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)? That artwork (by Michael Greenholt) tickled the pleasure center in my head and generated curiosity. There are enough stories about how crappy cover art can sink a book, well here's an example of artwork that snagged my interest straight away. This combined with the back of the book synopsis, and I was sold.

Primed for a fun read, I cracked open the book, skimmed an amusing introduction by David Wong, and started into the Prologue. Then, trouble kicked sand into my paradise. Swifties all over the place (he said flirtatiously). Unnecessary dialogue tags like "purred", "cooed", "grumbled", "cried", "snapped", "gasped", "screamed", and "stammered" replacing the simple but effective tag team of "said" alongside a judicious use of italics and punctuation. The prose called attention to itself for all the wrong reasons and hit my "danger-danger, warning-warning" alert, instilling in me the desire to drop this book straight away. Masochist that I am, I persevered. Good thing, too. My advice? Readers who are turned off by this sort of writing should skip the prologue (long story short: for want of nookie, the President of the US -- an unnamed, but most certainly Bill Clinton figure -- initiates a chain of events that ends up with China, Russia and the US committing to nuclear war).  Chapter One and onward are mostly free of these blemishes.

At the heart of The Oblivion Society is a story about friendship amongst twenty-something-year-old outcasts told with verve, authority and no small amount of humor. The characters include a pair of geek siblings (Vivian and Bobby) and their equally geeky friend (Erik), a not quite goth (Sherri), and a playa with no game whatsoever (Trent). The story follows these characters through a comedic, frustrating, and all too painfully empathetic day until the Bombs drop and wipe out their small, Florida town (as well as most of the world). In the aftermath, our characters hit the road to both escape the worst of the irradiated zone near them as well as find other survivors. Horrors await them, both from the world around them as well as from within their own bodies.

Heavy doses of humor makes this work, as well as an unflinching eye to these characters and their geek culture societal microcosm. The characters' mentality is that odd blend of mature about intellectual matters but immature about social ones. These are the sorts of characters who believe themselves to be master sword swingers when they have no attack skills whatsoever (But hey, perhaps they'll roll a natural twenty and succeed nevertheless, so why not try? NOTE: taking a page from Jeff Foxworthy's stand up: "If you understand this reference, you might be a geek." I admit I am.) and yet they are incapable of communicating without incorporating film, fiction, or music references.

Where The Oblivion Society stumbles is in the staging of its suspense/horror bits. While the novel hits the comedic notes with gusto, this reader did not get enough build up or sensory descriptions to really evoke the proper white-knuckle response to the fearsome bits. Example: While mutant insects would certainly be a freaky sight, unless my attention is drawn to the atmosphere of their hiding place, the relentless escalation of clues indicating something is not quite right, then by the time the attack comes, I am not quite in the right frame of mind. Even during that assault, this reader's mind's eye theater should "hear" the droning wings, "witness" the alien quality of their movements, or "feel" the liquid magma of their venom... Even the bodily transformation aspect, which hearkens back to Robert McCammon's delightfully creepy apocalyptic horror novel Swan Song, did not quite resonate with this reader in a scary way. Then again, the story comes from the perspective of (and, some might argue, aims to be read by) folks whose minds, upon hearing the word "mutation", would hit upon X-men comic books before Cronenberg's early filmic ouvre.

While it's a shame The Oblivion Society is not a wee bit more eerie or suspenseful, the Apocalypse has never been this enjoyable to read about. Those looking for a horrifying post-apocalyptic novel should probably turn elsewhere; however, readers intrigued by the notion of what a collaboration might play like between Kevin Smith and Christopher Moore on the subject of nuclear war (and what comes after) will enjoy Hart's entertaining novel.

The Oblivion Society by Marcus Alexander Hart
303 pages
Permuted Press
Published: September 2007

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