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Jam (2012)

by Yahtzee Croshaw(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1595829571 (ISBN13: 9781595829573)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Dark Horse

review 1: I suppose I'll start with a preface, because for once, who actually wrote this book is kind of important. For those of you who do not know, I am a huge fan of the ongoing Youtube video-game review series that goes by the name of Zero Punctuation. The host Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw, is a fast-talking Australian/Brit, who usually savagely rips apart video-games in a mix of crude and extremely witty humor that is flung at you at the speed of a machine gun. Basically, it's freakin' hilarious if you can both keep up with what he is saying and not get offended in some way, and since Croshaw also works for the magazine The Escapist, these reviews have been coming out weekly for quite awhile, and are usually extremely high quality for the most part. So, imagine my surprise when I lea... morerned that Yahtzee has actually written two novels to date, the first being the MMO/fantasy book Mogworld, and the second being Jam, the book we'll be talking about today.The plot of Jam is very straight-forward; it's the apocalypse that nobody was expecting. When our main character Travis wakes up during a brisk morning in Brisbane, he finds that it is neither zombies, earthquakes, a new ice age or rampaging dinosaurs that has finally destroyed the world, but rather a wave of carnivorous jam that has flooded the city eating every person or organic lifeforms it touches. No really, that is the plot. Travis understandably takes a few moments to register this, but after watching his roommate Frank get eaten by the jam right in front of him(and in case you think this is a spoiler it literally happens on the second page of the book), he teams up with his childhood friend Tim, a would-be journalist named Angela, and a constantly irritated man named Don to not only survive the deadly sea of preservative, a group of ironic plastic cultists and two mysterious secret agents that literally fall out of the sky in a helicopter, but figure what the hell could have possibly caused this bizarre apocalypse. It's basically, as the characters put it, The Floor is Lava: Jam Edition. There was a momentary pause as the person on the second floor internally debated their options; then a female face, wearing a baseball cap, appeared at the railing. "Why not?" "Jam," said Tim and I in unison. "It's jammed?" she said. We pointed, and she finally looked down into the foyer. "Oh. Oh my." "Don't touch it! It eats people!" warned Tim. "It ate Frank," I added. -Page 15So, if you couldn't tell, Jam is very much a comedic novel first and foremost. I guess that makes sense, Yahtzee is after all a comedian(ish), so it's a good thing that the book is very, very funny. Interactions between characters as they try to comprehend their absurd situation or work through one of the many problems that comes up when surviving a sea of carnivorous jam. Yahtzee just has a way with words to amplify every comedic saturation that comes up, but after all, this is not a five minute review on YouTube expressly to make the viewer laugh; crafting an actual flowing narrative is a whole other thing entirely. So how does the novel stack up, not as a comedy, but as, you know, a book. Well, I'll guess I'll focus on the negatives first. The premise is just sort of a one-time joke. The mere comedic power and absurdity of the premise has worn off once you've gotten adjusted to the flow of the book, and Yahtzee doesn't seem to have a lot more to do with it, so it kind of just hangs around for the rest of the book, choosing its time to pick off characters whenever the plot calls for it. A little disappointing, considering the vast number of things I know he could have done with it. The only real enhancement of the premise is the when the jam-proof plastic suits are introduced a third or so into the book, but I expect the only reason those exist so Yahtzee didn't need to keep coming up with new ways how the characters would navigate the sea of jam. Also, as many have pointed out in other reviews of this book, like the premise, the narrative itself seems like it's spread a little thin(amazing pun intended). Looking back on the book, not a lot actually happens considering the length, but even though that is a problem I need to point out, I will add that I was never once bored while I was reading the book. That's probably mostly due to the mix of Yahtzee's clever comedic writing and his ability to keep throwing the characters into stupid but hilarious situations. Seriously, I don't think Travis and the rest ever meet a person who isn't either crazy, robotic or trying to kill them throughout the entire book, so either Yahtzee is being clever and making fun of the trope that most apocalypse novels have civilization and human decency collapsing within a couple of days, or he's actually being serious and being a bad writer. Really though, it's extremely likely it's the former, I find it hard to believe he's being serious when at one point Tim is a candidate in an election/rebellion to overthrow an "ironic" cult of plastic wearing fanatics in which his opponent goes by the name, and I quote, "Lord Awesomo". So yeah, he's probably just having a little fun. While from a technical standout, the writing is quite good, I just wish that Yahtzee had occasionally tried to be a little more serious occasionally. OK, yes, it might be hard to get into the deep complexity of characters when they are surrounded by man-eating jam, but even when it seems like the novel should dip into the characters or actually take itself seriously for a moment, it usually doesn't, and then just waves the whole thing off with a joke. It doesn't seem to ever have the confidence to ever expect to be taken seriously, and maybe for good reason, but I would have liked to see Yahtzee, well, maybe "try harder" is the wrong phrase, but have the courage to show he's more than just the silly video-game reviewer that he portrays himself as. Especially because I already know for a fact after reading some of his works that he can pull off some legitimately good writing. And this complaint would stand for the entire duration of the book... if not for the fantastic ending. We'll get to that. guess it is time to start talking about characters, and I suppose we can start with Travis, our main character, who is both my favorite and the most well-developed character in the entire cast. Travis starts the book as a textbook hopeless person. He is the sort of person who is extremely passive, he always just sort of goes with the flow without really voicing an opinion, which isn't helped by the fact that he is clueless about how to handle awkward or pressuring situations. This leads to him being sort of lowest ring of the survivors, and the butt of everyone's jokes, which I thought was interesting. Hell, they even point this out directly in the novel, where the characters are having a (totally in context conversation) about who the main character would be if this a apocalypse movie, Angela points out that Travis would the last person you would choose to be the main character, telling that him that he "isn't exactly dynamic". And he really isn't. He isn't assertive, he isn't even in the middle of things half the time; he behaves exactly the opposite of how an insert main-character would, but it's here where he gets his depth as a character. Granted , he is a sort of a late-bloomer, development only moving past from hints to action almost near the end of the novel, and it's only until maybe the last few pages that his character finally lays the cards on the table, but in a truly great bit of writing on Yahtzee's part. And for that, I can appreciate him for being original, entertaining, and pretty a great character to boot. Tim is Travis' perhaps only real friend at the start of the book, and pretty much the exact opposite of Travis in every conceivable way. With his old tiresome life behind due to the obvious, Tim has renewed vigor for live and is ready to take on the world, whether he is actually ready for it or not. He's mostly there to act as a stark contrasts to Travis probably, being reckless where Travis is overly cautious, and a little abrasive where Travis is apologetic. His character isn't exactly anything original, but Yahtzee him takes in a direction, that while well trodden on by other apocalypse stories, it feels fresh enough due to the sort of unique character dynamic between him and Travis, especially towards the end of the book. Again, no spoilers, but credit due that his rather radical development is hinted throughout the text as early as the first few pages. Don is the straight man, the one who completely recognizes the absolute absurdity of this entire situation, and is pretty much pissed off all of the time because of that. The humor in his character comes from the fact that he was actually a functioning member of society before the jampocalypse, and now that he is stuck in a group of former slackers who are either in his eyes pathetic or occasionally retarded, well, the comedy possibilities are endless. However, Don actually is one of the more developed members in the cast, and while I won't give away exactly how he changes from the beginning of the book to the end, the way his development(as well as Travis') is handled is my absolute favorite kind, developing through subtle actions and the such. And while his personality never changes, all you need to do is read between the lines to figure out how he really feels, and that is a huge plus is my book. The rest of the characters are mostly just there. Yahtzee provides them with dialogue that is entertaining, but people like Angela, Princess Ravenhair(who appears later on), and even the two secret agents X and Y ultimately. That's alright I suppose, honestly we're probably lucky that we got as much growth in the characters as we did, so I suppose I'm okay with the characters as a whole. Besides from Travis, none of them are particularly fantastic, but thanks to Yahtzee's dialogue, I won't be forgetting them anytime soon. And you know what, that says a lot.My voice trailed away. Don folded his arms and sighed through his teeth, irritated by his own emotions. "You really are hopeless aren't you." "Not anymore." -Page 398 I guess I'll talk about the ending of the book for a bit, which really, you usually shouldn't ever do in a spoiler-free review such as this one, but there's a couple points I need to take away from it, so bear with me. So, I think I've made it clear that throughout my review that when I was reading this book, I never really decided if I thought that Yahtzee was a capable writer or not. Whether he actually had graduated from his quick and fun Youtube videos and crafted a narrative worthy of celebration. And you know, if the book had ended maybe about 20 pages earlier, I would've said no. I would've said that while it was tons of fun to read, Jam wasn't anything more than a good comedy with great dialogue, and would have left it at that, and possibly have never written this review. But the book did not end 20 pages earlier. Look, I'm not going to pretend the ending is any sort of amazing piece of literature, but what it was was exactly I wanted to see from Yahtzee for this entire book, a genuine, great piece of writing. As the book enters the climax, it might seem like little has changed, but through certain pieces of dialouge, I began to realize that things were getting darker. A lot darker, but the book still had the humor going strong. As the book went on, and sentences that carried subtle emotional depth wormed their way in, I realized that I didn't know if I was supposed to be laughing or not anymore. That turned into uncertainty, and then finally as the last few pages went by, I realized that this was becoming honestly extremely depressing, and as Travis' character's tips its hand, I was honestly and completely emotional invested in what was happening. Yahtzee still surprised me even though I had been expecting this kind of thing for the whole book, and that was because he did it in his own unique way. So... well done sir.Jam won't exactly be changing any lives any time soon, but I recommended not only because of the ending, but just because it is funny as hell, which was, after all, the author's original intent. It's a great comedic book that just goes a little above and beyond what was expected, and I just love when a book can take something as absurd, and let's be honest, as stupid as this premise, and make a good book out of it. So go check it out and have a laugh, and hopefully a little more than that. Goodbye for now guys.Final Verdict: 7(.5)/10P.S: "I couldn't find a stick."
review 2: It isn't a fantastic novel, but I couldn't stop reading despite its flaws. It was pretty easy to guess how it was going to end, but I was definitely still surprised and interested in how the story got there. Even though I wouldn't call any of the characters likable, I still ended up really fond of them. The action was fairly good. I rarely got confused about what the characters were doing. The biggest thing the novel has going for it is the unique tone, which does a lot to sell the concept. less

Download links for: Jam

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