REVIEW: The 7 Habits of Highly Infective People NOVELLA by: William Todd Rose
Editor’s Note: This novella has been expanded and is being re-released as a full novel later this year. We will try to get you a review of the full novel as well as B.B.’s only complaint was that it wasn’t long enough – and soon will be!
The first thing that came to mind while reading this novella was how much I kept imagining The Dude (from The Big Lebowski) telling a drugged out version of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, both of which I love. This story is told from two distinctively different points of view, the first being by Bosley and the second is Ocean. Bosley is initially a stoner who, I personally, keep waiting to talk about his jelly shoes and comment on a nice marmot. (For those who have seen The Big Lebowski, you know what I mean) However he is able to slip through time randomly and uncontrollably. On one such trip into the future he comes across a young girl named Ocean suffering a life of post zombie apocalypse. After his return to his time, he promises himself that he will change the future so that Ocean will never have to suffer.
This story worked so well because the author was able to make to very unique voices for each of the main characters, they had personality. This made it easier to care about what happened to them. The violence that was in the novella wasn’t so much graphic as it was personal. This made the gore that was in the story feel a little more unsettling, and therefore, has a bigger impact. I could also tell that William Todd Rose took his time to write this story since so much thought was put forth and that the fact he did some research really shows. He understood his subject enough to make it sound plausible instead of just hokey. The momentum of the book is consistent up until the end. It starts out strong and stays engaging with no real lag in the middle. I really like how each chapter alternates between Bosley and Ocean so that you want to know what happens next. My only real complaint and I feel this way about most short stories and novellas, is that they never seem long enough.
Overall I really enjoyed reading The 7 Habits of Highly Infective People. I liked that the author made a reference and based one of his main characters off a movie that, to me, is a classic film. But I mostly I like that fact that he took time with his characters and created them so that I cared about what happened to them. He also put a spin on the initial spread of the virus, making it into more of an STI in the beginning stages. I think that the ending was the best part simply because it had some interesting twists. Some of them were a little obvious, but others were surprising. This is a book that is really worth reading and I plan to read it again, mostly because I was left with of feeling of “huh…weirdâ€, but in a good way. The sign of a good story is that it leaves the reader thinking and wondering, which this one does. Plus it fills in that rarely used niche of drug induced time travelling zombie fiction, which has been sorely neglected lately.
While not yet available you can sign up for it’s release announcement on Amazon
