Roadvolution

by Danger Slater

Marc Wright is just your average yuppie douchebag. He’s got a fancy job in the city, and an even fancier car with which he likes to drive to that job. Yeah, Marc is calm and cool and in control of his world... ...until the morning all the roads and bridges decide to spontaneously “wake up” and go on a killing spree across northeastern New Jersey. Now Marc must team up with Libby - an equally full-of-shit punk rock princess - and a motley group of other commuters, and fight their way out of the urban sprawl of the city. Are we slaves to our commute, or is our commute there to serve us? Is there a way back home from here, or have we driven too far off course? Whatever the answers may be, there’s no escaping it now. We’re all stuck in the gridlock, and the ROADVOLUTION has begun!

Genres: Bizarro Fiction, Horror

102 pages, Paperback

First published August 3, 2014

About the author

Wonderland Award winning author Danger Slater is the world’s most flammable writer! He likes to use a lot of exclamation points!

Reviews

[Kaisersoze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though bizarro reads are not typically my thing, I could not go past Danger Slater's concept of the actual roads we commute on rising up to destroy humanity in a completely unique vision of the apocalypse. The concept is brilliant and Slater produces some quality scenes of mayhem and destruction.

However, he succeeds too well in making the POV protagonist so completely unlikeable that his obvious redemptive arc is simply too late (and too swift) to make amends. Slater also has a tendency to over-write so that his prose becomes too complicated for its own good. Then there is the ending of Roadvolution, which the less said about, the better; but to me it seemed Slater had an awesome idea and nowhere satisfying narratively to go with it.

All in all, bizarro fans will likely get a real kick out of this one - even if it clocks in at only 73 pages (with the final 30 or so given over to advertisements for the publisher's other works and an excerpt from another Slater story called LOCH NESS LAY).

2.5 to 3 Car Swallowing Tunnels for Roadvolution.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a vision of technological apocalypse, this is a hell of a lot of fun. Regardless, it's clear that technology is going to kill us all. It's probably good if you get the print version instead of the ebook. In fact, you should probably start backing away from the computer now. Hope you have some canned food in the basement.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

"We're sorry. Due to an implausible and catastrophic world - changing incident, your call can not be completed as dialled. Please dial the number again and godspeed"

Well, Roadvolution....where the hell do you even start with this one? Its a "wouldn't it be insane if this happened" kind of story. Roads, tunnels, bridges, all become sentient, murder people, and it goes from there.

I spent half the book trying to figure out if I liked any of the characters, but I guess I was never meant to. They are all tropes, but tropes for a reason. I guess there's some sort of deep meaningful revelation that we are all the same, but just have different masks on (or some such), but does it really matter? It's a story about the acid fuelled nightmare of living asphalt? Character progression was never going to be at the top of list.

The actual horror of the thing is handled well, with just the right level of absolute absurdity, and visceral carnage. Slater needs commending for actually writing 100 hundred pages about the premise, and for the most part, making it work. That's not to say the writing is stellar, but its passable enough (and when combined with the ridiculous title/plot), makes you want to see it through to the end

The ending is rubbish, but I can't say I expected much. If you want to read something bizarre, give this a go, but have reasonable expectations going into it.

[Kyle Feuerbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read by Danger Slater and it certainly will not be the last. This was a very enjoyable, fast-paced read.