Review from a Transgressive Fiction Fan
A dark mirror of the human psyche conjured with prose so crisp that every sentence on the page crackles like a downed power line spewing high voltage. Ballard’s mistrust of technology and humanity is so alluring that I couldn’t help but find it all very logical that the occupants of a state-of-the-art high-rise would lose their shit in a serious way, form clans and wage war with other floors, and eventually go completely feral. As far as I am concerned, in every human heart stands a forty-story tower, the halls littered with garbage bags, broken bottles, graffiti, urine and the blood of the weak. The apocalypse is no macrocosm of zombies, bad weather or alien overlords; the end of the world is the every-day, a microcosm of our own filthiest desires and the ever-increasing ability to indulge in all our cruel appetites through the sleek anonymity technology provides. Admit it: we’re all scum.
“Insightful” Review from a Mainstream Reader
Hey! Guess what! This book starts out with dead dog on the first sentence! And then there’s more dead dogs! No one tells you that! Fuck you dead dogs! I am not reading this book!