Breeding Ground

I enjoyed a few elements of this story. The first person narration worked in the beginning, because it clearly showed the progression of the main character from oblivion to worry to panic to fear, and you knew enough about him to care what happened—at least at first. Once the monsters hit and he has to fight, and wimps out the majority of the time, I stopped enjoying it altogether. However, that has more to do with the type of protagonist I enjoy than the narration itself.

I also enjoyed the concept of this – all of the women becoming sick and decaying in front of the eyes of the men. That presented a kind of psychological element to the whole thing. Because you know the main character lives at least through the story in the book (he is alive in the prologue speaking of how he wrote this, after all), the stakes aren’t so much about his safety as they are his quality of life. We watch him break down as everything he hoped for and loved is taken from him. His girlfriend, Chloe, and the hope for a baby are snatched from him, and yet some part of him still holds on to that love. He cherishes his memories. I really enjoyed that. Until he ran away from her. Practical, yes. Romantic, no. Then the widows arrive, and it’s post-apocalyptic mayhem. I’m always a fan of end-of-the-world drama, because it’s normally very exciting. However, in the hands of this passive and less than impressive character, the post-apocalyptic stuff wasn’t what I expected.

Other elements that I thought really worked: the descriptions. So much of the tension in this story came from the way the world and Chloe and the widows were described. It was very clear prose that evoked very vivid images, in my opinion. And although the oblivion that Matthew experiences in the first few chapters seems ludicrous to me, it also rings true. I’m not sure if I would notice the state of the neighborhood until it started effecting me directly. That’s a scary thought in and of itself, because the most frightening aspect of what happened in this book is how easily it happened. It just snuck up on the world without a fight, and then it was just a “wait and see” game, like the doctor said. Everyone was helpless against it, and that’s my kind of monster. One where surviving requires beating the odds. At the same time, though, I wasn’t always on the edge of my seat, scared by the story. Not even in the beginning, before it’s clear that Matthew Edge is a coward.

After answering this week’s IPP, I got to thinking about the fear factor of this novel. What was it that made me think the monster was beautifully crafted but prevented me from really feeling the fear? I think it may be the structure of the novel itself. It starts off with a prologue that clearly shows us that the narrator was alive throughout the events in this text, since he wrote it after it happened. And the way he talks about Chloe in the opening chapter lets the reader know that she doesn’t make it, so there’s no reason to become attached to her character from the start. I think that lessens the emotional impact, thus lessening the fear. However, I’m not sure that changing the structure would change this, mostly because Pinborough may have lost something had she set the novel up any other way. The prologue serves as the hook that grabs the reader and pushes us to turn the page, even while the condition develops slowly in those early chapters. Removing the prologue and changing the structure may eliminate that hook. So, I’m not sure what could be done to restore that fear factor that comes with the unknown, with the uncertainty of whether or not the characters will survive.

I know a lot of this post is focused on the beginning of the book, but as I’m currently redrafting the beginning of my WIP, I learned the most from Breeding Ground’s opening, especially since that’s the part I enjoyed most. I wonder what other readers think of the structure and the way this novel starts.