lillisisli

A friend pointed out that Hurley was reading this comic during Lost. (Hi, Chang!) That's as good a reason as any to check a book out of the library. And it was going to rain all weekend anyway. This was an enjoyable read, but reading Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories right after sort of blew Y: The Last Man right out my brain. Here's what I can remember... A 20-something named Yorrick (His dad taught Shakespeare at some college happened to pick a character's name with Y as the initial.) and a pet monkey are the only two survivors of a plague that wipes out every male mammal in the world. He winds up road tripping with a government agent and a biologist expert in cloning in a quest to save the world. Along the way they are pursued by The Daughters Of Amazon who are happy not to have any men around and intend to kill the last remaining guy. It's a cool premise, and the man-less world is painstakingly imagined. Not only are ~95% of the governors and Congress dead, so are most of the pilots, soldiers, and garbage men. The Washington Monument becomes a monument to the dead men (and their phalluses, har har). Motorcycles are highly prized because they can get around all the abandoned vehicles on the road. (Inconveniently, the plague struck during rush hour.) My only problem with the series is that I don't really care about the characters that much. The remaining man is hapless, the government official is mysterious, the biologist is mousy but brave. So while the opening part of the book is very engaging, by the time it settles into a steady state it's just these relatively undeveloped characters and whatever weirdos they meet in post-apocalyptic America. I can already tell that Y has one thing in common with James Bond -- whoever he gets romantically involved with will have to die so that the story can continue. I'll still check out the 2nd in this series if/when it shows up at the library. It's a promising but flawed start. I wonder what significance it has to Lost...

2022-10-17 18:20