Reviews and Comments

This book gave me nightmares, a first in fifteen years or so. The Last Policeman is essentially a bleak and relentless story about waiting for the end of the world. It's essentially asking "what's the point" and not pretending to provide any easy answers. When total destruction looms in a few months, and there's nothing you can do to affect any of it, no sane hope that it will be miraculously averted, what does one crime matter? What does anything matter?

If the novel was about existential navel-gazing. it would be unreadable. With a proactive and symphatetic protagonist who wants to survive despite everything, and who still wants to act like a human being, Last Policeman is chilling in its believability. It got under my skin in a way I hardly thought possible. I have no idea if the book was really that good or it was just me.

Powers. Personalities. Society. These are the three pillars of a good superhero story, and Zeroes builds them strong. The powers of our heroes are well-defined and understandable, yet unique - none of the standard cookie-cutter fare here. The characters are interesting and likeable, and you want to root for them even when they do stupid or hurtful things. And the world around them reacts to them, puts them in difficult situations and doesn't give them an easy way out.

Zeroes is a delight. Of course I love superheroes, but I can easily recommend Zeroes even to those the genre normally leaves cold. The plot is simple in the best possible way: no convoluted conspiracies, just normal and not-so-normal people who want things, and end up in confilct because of this.