Dragon Virus by Laura Anne Gilman
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Didn’t like it. Plain and simple. Pretty short, so not a lot of time lost. A virus, cause/cure unknown begins to ‘leapfrog evolution’ of human children. Society breaks down around the upheaval over a century or so of elapsed time. In the end, everything becomes barbaric & bestial.
The blurb describes the story as a tragedy in six parts. OK, I can agree with that. The stories were tragic. But, I don’t like no-hope tragedy type stories. I’ve ranted on this in several places. The worst example of this I can reference is The Road by Cormack McCarthy. This story is not nearly as well written, though; it simply shares that dreary, no-hope, vibe.
The story is highly focused on the morbidity (perceived?) of human society. The biases (anti-religious, pro-climate change, environmentalist, etc.) shown in the story are too thick for me. The story is very halting in the way it’s written, also. It’s hard to read the train of thought style. It throws me out of the story because I have to go back and re-read things to understand what was happening.
But, it was short, and a freebie… so not wasted funds at least.
Words from the Wampuscat 