What do you think?
Rate this book
Unamerica
Buried half a mile beneath the desert sands of the US–Mexico border, there exists a secret city that holds the promise of everything that draws immigrants and refugees to America—liberty, luxury, and excess...
In this terminal autonomous zone, two prophets will arise—one, a reckless seeker who believes the psychedelic mushrooms he discovered will spur a revolution in human consciousness; the other, a fire–and–brimstone preacher endowed by strange angels with a power that heals the sick and raises the dead—and as rival factions emerge around them, a march toward war begins...
In this terminal autonomous zone, two prophets will arise—one, a reckless seeker who believes the psychedelic mushrooms he discovered will spur a revolution in human consciousness; the other, a fire–and–brimstone preacher endowed by strange angels with a power that heals the sick and raises the dead—and as rival factions emerge around them, a march toward war begins...
448 pages, Paperback
First published June 7, 2019
6 people are currently reading
445 people want to read
About the author
Cody Goodfellow
162 books383 followersCODY GOODFELLOW has written nine novels and five collections, and has won three Wonderland Book Awards for Bizarro Fiction. He wrote, co-produced and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene films Stay At Home Dad and Baby Got Bass, which have become viral sensations on YouTube. He has appeared in numerous short films, TV shows, music videos and commercials as research for his previous novel, Sleazeland. He also edits the hyperpulp zine Forbidden Futures. He “lives” in San Diego. Find out more at codygoodfellow.com.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
June 6, 2019
Full Review
Unamerica is the Great American Dystopian Novel. It harshly and hilariously satirizes the worst of American culture while remaining a page-turning, exciting story with engaging characters and excellent prose. This novel has convinced me that Goodfellow is one of the best speculative fiction authors working today. Very highly recommended.
Unamerica is the Great American Dystopian Novel. It harshly and hilariously satirizes the worst of American culture while remaining a page-turning, exciting story with engaging characters and excellent prose. This novel has convinced me that Goodfellow is one of the best speculative fiction authors working today. Very highly recommended.
April 15, 2019
“Never Work. Never Die.”
I can’t remember if Cody Goodfellow was my introduction to the bizzarro genre, but he was the first bizarro writer to leave a lasting impression on me. I started with ‘Perfect Union,’ a novel about a man trapped in an internecine war between anti-state Communists and Stalinists. It was gross, funny, bleak and so very fucking weird. It was pretty much everything I look for in a book.
Since then I’ve read seven other Goodfellow titles. Some left greater impressions on me than others, but all maintained the anarchic quality of ‘Perfect Union.’ He’s become my go-to writer when I want to be both entertained and challenged as a reader (his prose tends to make me feel like my brain is doing squat thrusts). Knowing Goodfellow’s track record, I knew I was going to love ‘Unamerica.’ Though I didn’t know just how much.
I truly believe Goodfellow’s raised the bar on his past work. This novel’s deeply political (the book takes place in a concentration camp build a half-mile under the desert sands of the U.S. southern border) and reads at times like a cross between pulp literature and a manifesto. This is the dystopian novel we need in 2019; while fantastical, it feels all too real, as if Unamerica itself is the ultimate endpoint for our country’s capitalist, nativist barbarism.
Content-wise, it’s loaded with all sort of things that check my boxes—there’s grossness, gore, humor, deeply disturbing imagery, and some very questionable protagonists. Characters make choices with their best intentions diluted by their sense of self-importance, and the result is things in their world getting infinitely worse. Yet there’s this deep sense of humanity that manages to shine through the chaos. A hope that maybe empathy can save us.
After reading the last few pages of ‘Unamerica,’ I sat feeling winded for about a half hour. There is so much going on in this book, and it all manages to come together in a way that I never would have expected. It made me laugh, hard. This book has the trappings to become a cult hit, like a more radical Fight Club.
This is, hands-down, the best thing I’ve read so far this year.
I can’t remember if Cody Goodfellow was my introduction to the bizzarro genre, but he was the first bizarro writer to leave a lasting impression on me. I started with ‘Perfect Union,’ a novel about a man trapped in an internecine war between anti-state Communists and Stalinists. It was gross, funny, bleak and so very fucking weird. It was pretty much everything I look for in a book.
Since then I’ve read seven other Goodfellow titles. Some left greater impressions on me than others, but all maintained the anarchic quality of ‘Perfect Union.’ He’s become my go-to writer when I want to be both entertained and challenged as a reader (his prose tends to make me feel like my brain is doing squat thrusts). Knowing Goodfellow’s track record, I knew I was going to love ‘Unamerica.’ Though I didn’t know just how much.
I truly believe Goodfellow’s raised the bar on his past work. This novel’s deeply political (the book takes place in a concentration camp build a half-mile under the desert sands of the U.S. southern border) and reads at times like a cross between pulp literature and a manifesto. This is the dystopian novel we need in 2019; while fantastical, it feels all too real, as if Unamerica itself is the ultimate endpoint for our country’s capitalist, nativist barbarism.
Content-wise, it’s loaded with all sort of things that check my boxes—there’s grossness, gore, humor, deeply disturbing imagery, and some very questionable protagonists. Characters make choices with their best intentions diluted by their sense of self-importance, and the result is things in their world getting infinitely worse. Yet there’s this deep sense of humanity that manages to shine through the chaos. A hope that maybe empathy can save us.
After reading the last few pages of ‘Unamerica,’ I sat feeling winded for about a half hour. There is so much going on in this book, and it all manages to come together in a way that I never would have expected. It made me laugh, hard. This book has the trappings to become a cult hit, like a more radical Fight Club.
This is, hands-down, the best thing I’ve read so far this year.
June 7, 2019
Scroll down for the link to the interview I did with Goodfellow on the Dickheads Podcast!
I have reviewed most of Cody Goodfellow's books and I normally kick off the review with a paragraph on who Cody is. I feel like should not have to do that at this point plus I did just that three book reviews back when I wrote about the book set to come out after this one called Scum of the Earth. This book is a very different tone, but both are pure Cody Goodfellow. This one is more of a dark and serious novel and in the vein of Cody as I think of him. Not to say there are not fun moments as there certainly are. Most reading experiences from Goodfellow have equal moments of pained laughter and cringe-worthy unsettling doses of weird.
It might sound like exaggerating to say that I waited 10 years for this book but I did. Goodfellow has been working off and on Unamerica for that long, and once told me the concept during a conversation at Bizarrocon. I have several times since asked Cody when I was going to get this book. My bar was incredibly high so I was a little afraid that this book could not live up to the hype. So let's dig into this and figure out was this book worth the wait.
Unamerica is a story seen from several points of view but our main character is a former illegal raver and drug dealer Nolan Hatch who is trying to sneak his way back over the border after a few years aboard. It is amazing how ripped from the headlines this novel feels even with a ten year gestation period. Hatch gets taken by Border Patrol like commandos and is dumped in an underground city made mostly of stacked up storage containers.
In this underground city, it is basically anything goes, you don't have to work, the parties never end and drugs are endlessly available. Once in Unamerican Nolan reverts to his former ways. He can move drugs, and makes himself useful to the gangs but why does this city exist? What is the reason this place exists?
At the same time, religion rises in the form of several street preachers and the two forces rise not unlike the King classic The Stand, the way the drug acts seems very influenced by the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. For my money that is a great combination of influences. The street preachers give this novel a chance to explore religion.
There is a lot going on in this novel in this novel and I think Goodfellow may have been trying to express many political ideas that were rooted in the Bush Jr. years when it was conceived. This novel explores the way ghetto-style segregation and drugs affect targeted areas of communities. It also explores the idea of how and why the government benefits from pumping drugs into these neighborhoods. It is very much about prison-like conditions the residents in these neighborhoods have to deal with. One of the most interesting elements is the corporate government partnership that runs the underground city. In that sense, it explores the ills of capitalism in underground economies.
I know that sounds like a lot of different messages and ideas, It is true this novel explores religion, drugs, capitalism, social Darwinism, and probably more I didn't catch. It is a lot to take in but it is OK because Goodfellow fills the 436 pages with texture and swag. Underrated as a writer Goodfellow is a diabolical genius who balances strong political messages subtle moments of bizarro insanity. For every jaw-dropping speech about how the human brain works there are just as many scenes like the one with the cannibal complaining of needing maple syrup for his human meat. The line between high brow and low brow as never been thinner and it is one of the things that makes this author one of my favorites.
Goodfellow can break unwritten rules and get away with it. For example, no one should get away with paragraphs that are basically lists of elements that make up a setting. Goodfellow does this all the time in this novel Hatch’s introduction to Unamerica walking in has a long list of the various things he sees. They generally work. Goodfellow is one of the smartest writers of my generation and it is impossible for me to read his work without marveling at his skill, intelligence, and ability on page after page. Unamerica is the best thing I have read this year and I have read a few masterpieces already this year. This is a must-read for fans of weird fiction that lives on the border of science fiction and Horror. Goodfellow's most assured work is a dystopia not to miss. I hope the people behind the Philip K Dick award pay attention as it is worthy.
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...
I have reviewed most of Cody Goodfellow's books and I normally kick off the review with a paragraph on who Cody is. I feel like should not have to do that at this point plus I did just that three book reviews back when I wrote about the book set to come out after this one called Scum of the Earth. This book is a very different tone, but both are pure Cody Goodfellow. This one is more of a dark and serious novel and in the vein of Cody as I think of him. Not to say there are not fun moments as there certainly are. Most reading experiences from Goodfellow have equal moments of pained laughter and cringe-worthy unsettling doses of weird.
It might sound like exaggerating to say that I waited 10 years for this book but I did. Goodfellow has been working off and on Unamerica for that long, and once told me the concept during a conversation at Bizarrocon. I have several times since asked Cody when I was going to get this book. My bar was incredibly high so I was a little afraid that this book could not live up to the hype. So let's dig into this and figure out was this book worth the wait.
Unamerica is a story seen from several points of view but our main character is a former illegal raver and drug dealer Nolan Hatch who is trying to sneak his way back over the border after a few years aboard. It is amazing how ripped from the headlines this novel feels even with a ten year gestation period. Hatch gets taken by Border Patrol like commandos and is dumped in an underground city made mostly of stacked up storage containers.
In this underground city, it is basically anything goes, you don't have to work, the parties never end and drugs are endlessly available. Once in Unamerican Nolan reverts to his former ways. He can move drugs, and makes himself useful to the gangs but why does this city exist? What is the reason this place exists?
At the same time, religion rises in the form of several street preachers and the two forces rise not unlike the King classic The Stand, the way the drug acts seems very influenced by the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. For my money that is a great combination of influences. The street preachers give this novel a chance to explore religion.
There is a lot going on in this novel in this novel and I think Goodfellow may have been trying to express many political ideas that were rooted in the Bush Jr. years when it was conceived. This novel explores the way ghetto-style segregation and drugs affect targeted areas of communities. It also explores the idea of how and why the government benefits from pumping drugs into these neighborhoods. It is very much about prison-like conditions the residents in these neighborhoods have to deal with. One of the most interesting elements is the corporate government partnership that runs the underground city. In that sense, it explores the ills of capitalism in underground economies.
I know that sounds like a lot of different messages and ideas, It is true this novel explores religion, drugs, capitalism, social Darwinism, and probably more I didn't catch. It is a lot to take in but it is OK because Goodfellow fills the 436 pages with texture and swag. Underrated as a writer Goodfellow is a diabolical genius who balances strong political messages subtle moments of bizarro insanity. For every jaw-dropping speech about how the human brain works there are just as many scenes like the one with the cannibal complaining of needing maple syrup for his human meat. The line between high brow and low brow as never been thinner and it is one of the things that makes this author one of my favorites.
Goodfellow can break unwritten rules and get away with it. For example, no one should get away with paragraphs that are basically lists of elements that make up a setting. Goodfellow does this all the time in this novel Hatch’s introduction to Unamerica walking in has a long list of the various things he sees. They generally work. Goodfellow is one of the smartest writers of my generation and it is impossible for me to read his work without marveling at his skill, intelligence, and ability on page after page. Unamerica is the best thing I have read this year and I have read a few masterpieces already this year. This is a must-read for fans of weird fiction that lives on the border of science fiction and Horror. Goodfellow's most assured work is a dystopia not to miss. I hope the people behind the Philip K Dick award pay attention as it is worthy.
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...
February 9, 2021
Goodfellow's satire of American culture is as thought-provoking and relevant as it is horrifying, bizarre, and entertaining. It's amazing how much is crammed into these pages. I feel like my brain has been liquified into America soup, dosed with LSD, and blasted into oblivion. 5/5 stars, how the hell did you pull this off, Cody?
June 16, 2019
Cody Goodfellow on his Unamerica, writing, and inspirations. | More2Read
An American Nolan Hatch gets himself lost and caught up in somewhere off-the-grid, he finds himself in Unamerica.
“It’s a city of tens of thousands, somewhere beneath the Mexican desert, but it’s still a slum. The games may be cruel and life may be cheap, but Hatch knows how to play.”
This Unamerica requires many things and his first task is a barcode on his wrist then the navigational and survival skills needed through a place where, “Crime is rampant, cultivated and harvested like a product in itself.”
He encounters many characters, bizarre and strange, one key player that will set him on his quest for enterprise and entrepreneurship would be Jamie, the connection to the top dog in Unamerica, amongst all its denizens from every margin of American life.
Nolan puts art into chemistry they say, an engineer of human consciousness, he has something special to give, a transcending product, a fungal-derived tryptamine.
Will he be successfully whilst the men behind the scenes at work in this chess game in play, behind this sinister labyrinth of Unamerica?
This glorious Unamerica what a splendid place.
“Unamerica is a self-contained underground city run by a coalition of corporations in partnership with the federal government under the auspices of the Department of Commerce. An ideal focus group environment, where products from Olestra and artificial hearts to electronic mind control and nerve gas are tested on a captive market.”
A hook in this work is how this all will play out and the journey through this place and the quest of Nolan Hatch against such manipulations and capitalisation at work, and will he be success in spreading a new spiritual awakening or will a spiritual destruction come to fruition.
There will be social satire and commentary contained within.
Normality does not exist in this tale, it’s one mind twist of American dreams askew, Unamerica is a ride though nightmarish sensory world of deprivation and lust, an intoxication overload in this subterranean labyrinth of hell on earth, a divine comedy in a Cody Goodfellow vision.
Past read tales come to mind after reading this, like that of The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa with Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
If this is evolution then end of the world is near, in this narrative, with all the weird and Batshit craziness. The whys, the how it came about, and the journey of this Unamerica has the reader implanted and juxtaposed amongst terrible things, peoples, adjectives and nouns that will shock, all adding to this entertaining and interesting ride with sentences.
An original tale with a cautionary and dispossessed version of America the reader would hope to remain forever in fiction.
A work delivered with polarised potent prose taking you by the hand into the mind of Cody Goodfellow and it is one hell of a creation factory of characters and realms.
Starring:
The Arcade
Green Zone
Yellow Zone
Orange Zone
Jaime Blasco
Nolan Hatch
Sister Jude
The Rig Veda | The Green Man
Hector Obregon Uribe | La Toda Madre
Tres Ojos | Zero-Three
Los Venenos The Poison Boys
Reverend Orrin Litchfield
The Destroying Angels
Leland Snodgrass
Lalo Beltran Ortiz
Solomon Listor
Review with excerpts also @ More2Read
February 6, 2021
Cody Goodfellow's hottest new book has it all: raves on trucks, edible flypaper, magical lunchboxes, virtual-reality Thunderdome competitions, self-flagellating bicycles, stalactite buildings, riot foam, explosions, and blinking luchador masks. Oh, and drugs.
June 16, 2019
I'm already sure this will be in my personal top 10 (of not just books, but all things) for 2019, and probably top 5. As a fan, I expected something worthwhile, but Cody Goodfellow's Unamerica is beyond expectations. Dark satire with touches of Transmetropolitan and Terry Gilliam's Brazil, wrapped up in a subterranean, dystopian Juarez that serves sacred cows for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Can't recommend it enough.
July 3, 2019
To be honest, this is less likely to be a review, and more me just trying to see how many different ways I can say "I love this, buy it, borrow it, read it, love it with me" because damn. It managed to be everything I wanted it to be, yet went further, and did more than I had even hoped. It gave me those same feelings of excitement I had the first time I read Orwell, Vonnegut, and Burroughs, but possibly even more so because it's contemporary, it's here, and it's now. UNAMERICA takes the American Dream to the absolute limit that even at it's most bizarre, still feels too familiar for comfort. Capitalism run rampant, overflowing prison systems, immigration, and drug culture all collide and merge creating an environment where a revolution is unavoidable.
The characters are a fascinating and eclectic mix, and the writing is incredibly sensory and readable. I was constantly full of questions and curiosity, but never so much that I felt lost or frustrated (which can be a tough balance to pull off successfully). Thematically, it has it all. So much so trying to think of where to even begin is overwhelming, but in the best possible way. It's the kind of book my mind doesn't want to stop mulling over and examining--it's got serious meat on it's bones and I don't want to stop chewing. One of the elements that I really keep returning to is that it takes the classic "culture vs. counter culture" idea, and exposes them for the same thing, just with two different marketing campaigns. While that's not new in the real world, it certainly feels fresh in dystopian fiction. I honestly didn't think I'd see a book like this published in our era, and this could just be me being an ass (and most likely is), but I just assumed that stories like this were left in the days of A Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange. So to have that spirit here and now, with it's own style and it's own message for our current environment--I can't overstate just how happy that makes me.
The term "instant classic" gets thrown around so much as to be rendered essentially meaningless, but for me, UNAMERICA is truly deserving of it. Read this book!
The characters are a fascinating and eclectic mix, and the writing is incredibly sensory and readable. I was constantly full of questions and curiosity, but never so much that I felt lost or frustrated (which can be a tough balance to pull off successfully). Thematically, it has it all. So much so trying to think of where to even begin is overwhelming, but in the best possible way. It's the kind of book my mind doesn't want to stop mulling over and examining--it's got serious meat on it's bones and I don't want to stop chewing. One of the elements that I really keep returning to is that it takes the classic "culture vs. counter culture" idea, and exposes them for the same thing, just with two different marketing campaigns. While that's not new in the real world, it certainly feels fresh in dystopian fiction. I honestly didn't think I'd see a book like this published in our era, and this could just be me being an ass (and most likely is), but I just assumed that stories like this were left in the days of A Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange. So to have that spirit here and now, with it's own style and it's own message for our current environment--I can't overstate just how happy that makes me.
The term "instant classic" gets thrown around so much as to be rendered essentially meaningless, but for me, UNAMERICA is truly deserving of it. Read this book!
February 8, 2021
Read this for a book club (HOWLS) and I enjoyed it both less and then more than I thought I would.
The initial premise sounded intriguing (secret underground city at the US/Mexico border), but I was flabbergasted by the density of the prose. Goodfellow packed so much information into each sentence that the reading experience was a bit overwhelming, perhaps not unlike the chaotic setting described in the novel itself. This is a literary achievement, but was nevertheless an intense and somewhat challenging read. I also found the plot somewhat hard to follow. At various points I really felt like I had no idea what was going on and I was just along for the ride.
Content wise the book is a dystopian horror examination of our present and recent past in America. Goodfellow examines capitalism, immigration policy, American exceptionalism, and faith through a complex narrative with strong cyberpunk vibes.
As the book went on I became more and more interested and I actually really enjoyed the ending. I liked Unamerica. It’s a book that would probably merit a second reading, albeit I don’t relish the prospect of diving into the dense prose again. If they made an audiobook version of this with a really good narrator, I’d love to listen to it!
The initial premise sounded intriguing (secret underground city at the US/Mexico border), but I was flabbergasted by the density of the prose. Goodfellow packed so much information into each sentence that the reading experience was a bit overwhelming, perhaps not unlike the chaotic setting described in the novel itself. This is a literary achievement, but was nevertheless an intense and somewhat challenging read. I also found the plot somewhat hard to follow. At various points I really felt like I had no idea what was going on and I was just along for the ride.
Content wise the book is a dystopian horror examination of our present and recent past in America. Goodfellow examines capitalism, immigration policy, American exceptionalism, and faith through a complex narrative with strong cyberpunk vibes.
As the book went on I became more and more interested and I actually really enjoyed the ending. I liked Unamerica. It’s a book that would probably merit a second reading, albeit I don’t relish the prospect of diving into the dense prose again. If they made an audiobook version of this with a really good narrator, I’d love to listen to it!
June 18, 2023
A difficult read. I felt lost through much of it...perhaps keeping a flow chart of characters and locations would have helped (along with changing names of central characters). The premise was good and interesting, it just felt like too much packed into one relatively short book.
April 15, 2021
It's not very often that I put down a book, especially one that clocked in at 436 pags, and think "that really could have been a lot longer." There's so many ideas and characters going on in Cody Goodfellow's Unamerica that I think it could have been a doorstop like The Stand and it might have been even better. It's certainly better than a few Neal Stephenson books I've read that should have been half the size.
Unamerica is a nightmarish, sprawling metropolis underground near the Mexico/U.S. border. The cool thing is that everything is free. Food? Free. Medicine? Free! But if Heinlein was right about anything, it was there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The cost of all that free stuff is that you're a guinea pig. All the new meat replacement food? They're testing it out on the denizens of Unamerica first. Same with the medicine. I mean, at least they're not testing it on monkeys anymore, right?
Oh, the other bad news is this metropolis is run by various gangs, mostly delineated by ethicity. It becomes apparent very quickly that Unamerica is a shithole country. And it's mostly the criminal and criminally unlucky who end up there. The worldbuilding aspect of this novel is one area I wish there was a lot more of. As it is, the novel is practically bursting at the seams with ideas about what Unamerica looks, feels, and smells like. The descriptions of the city are some of my favorite parts of the book and some of the best near-future dystopian fiction I've read in a while.
The characters, on the other hand, are a bit lacking in the luster. The two main characters, Hatch and Jaime are fairly well fleshed out, with Hatch, an accidental tourist who brings a potentially life-altering magic mushroom to town, being the more distinctly drawn of the two. By the end, I was still struggling to figure out who Jaime was aside from a hapless sap with a tragic and perhaps paralyzing backstory. There is an interesting backstory for Litchfield, the hellfire and brimstone preacher, but despite his magical gift for healing and destroying, he feels a little flat and uninspired. Another area where this book could have used more book was letting some of the secondary and tertiary characters have a little more reason for being. There are a few really great characters that get introduced only to disappear into the maw of Unamerica.
For me, the book started to fall apart a bit in the third act. A lot happens. A whole lot. A real whole fucking lot happens and it happens fast. So fast that it kind of spins out of control and becomes a bit herky-jerky with a bit of wait, what's going on? and where'd this person come from? and oh, that person I forgot about is suddenly back? And, while it's not bad, it feels like the narrative shifts from first gear to fourth, with al the resultant gear-grinding and sputters one would expect before everything starts humming again.
Don't get me wrong. I'd rather read ten books as interesting and thought-provoking as Unamerica than one of any number of books with half the brains and half the heart. And I am absolutely going to read anything I can get my hands on by Goodfellow. I just wish there was an extended director's cut that let me be a tourist in Unamerica for just a little longer. It's an interesting place to visit, but I sure as shit wouldn't want to live there.
Unamerica is a nightmarish, sprawling metropolis underground near the Mexico/U.S. border. The cool thing is that everything is free. Food? Free. Medicine? Free! But if Heinlein was right about anything, it was there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The cost of all that free stuff is that you're a guinea pig. All the new meat replacement food? They're testing it out on the denizens of Unamerica first. Same with the medicine. I mean, at least they're not testing it on monkeys anymore, right?
Oh, the other bad news is this metropolis is run by various gangs, mostly delineated by ethicity. It becomes apparent very quickly that Unamerica is a shithole country. And it's mostly the criminal and criminally unlucky who end up there. The worldbuilding aspect of this novel is one area I wish there was a lot more of. As it is, the novel is practically bursting at the seams with ideas about what Unamerica looks, feels, and smells like. The descriptions of the city are some of my favorite parts of the book and some of the best near-future dystopian fiction I've read in a while.
The characters, on the other hand, are a bit lacking in the luster. The two main characters, Hatch and Jaime are fairly well fleshed out, with Hatch, an accidental tourist who brings a potentially life-altering magic mushroom to town, being the more distinctly drawn of the two. By the end, I was still struggling to figure out who Jaime was aside from a hapless sap with a tragic and perhaps paralyzing backstory. There is an interesting backstory for Litchfield, the hellfire and brimstone preacher, but despite his magical gift for healing and destroying, he feels a little flat and uninspired. Another area where this book could have used more book was letting some of the secondary and tertiary characters have a little more reason for being. There are a few really great characters that get introduced only to disappear into the maw of Unamerica.
For me, the book started to fall apart a bit in the third act. A lot happens. A whole lot. A real whole fucking lot happens and it happens fast. So fast that it kind of spins out of control and becomes a bit herky-jerky with a bit of wait, what's going on? and where'd this person come from? and oh, that person I forgot about is suddenly back? And, while it's not bad, it feels like the narrative shifts from first gear to fourth, with al the resultant gear-grinding and sputters one would expect before everything starts humming again.
Don't get me wrong. I'd rather read ten books as interesting and thought-provoking as Unamerica than one of any number of books with half the brains and half the heart. And I am absolutely going to read anything I can get my hands on by Goodfellow. I just wish there was an extended director's cut that let me be a tourist in Unamerica for just a little longer. It's an interesting place to visit, but I sure as shit wouldn't want to live there.
February 5, 2021
Read on my Kindle. 2.5 stars, rounded up. A HOWL Society group read. This was missing something for me. I never once felt excited to pick this up. Each time I read it, it felt like a chore. I am not sure if I would have finished had I not been reading with HOWLS.
While we manage to hear detailed background of several of the main characters, I felt like the characters were shallow. I never felt connected to any of them, I didn't really care what happened to them. I thought the plot was all over the place. When you think the plot is focused on one aspect, it changes to something else, before coming back in a weird and different way. The drug/dream sequences were very tough to follow, and I never knew what was "reality" and what wasn't. I think this was probably the point, but I personally just didn't enjoy it.
I understand completely why some would love this story, and while others would not. I just didn't fall on the "enjoy" side of this one. I rounded up for the badass take at the ending though.
While we manage to hear detailed background of several of the main characters, I felt like the characters were shallow. I never felt connected to any of them, I didn't really care what happened to them. I thought the plot was all over the place. When you think the plot is focused on one aspect, it changes to something else, before coming back in a weird and different way. The drug/dream sequences were very tough to follow, and I never knew what was "reality" and what wasn't. I think this was probably the point, but I personally just didn't enjoy it.
I understand completely why some would love this story, and while others would not. I just didn't fall on the "enjoy" side of this one. I rounded up for the badass take at the ending though.
November 26, 2023
DNF 40%.
I don't know how it could have won a Bizarro award. What parts are Bizarro in this? Unamerica is a dystopian novel, with some weird concepts but aren't them dystopias always a bit strange?
I tried my best to keep going, looking for a twist I might enjoyed. The only twist I found is the one where my eyes stop reading words and start skipping sentences until I barely know what I'm reading 😐 That famous magic trick that makes me put a book down immediately 👎
I don't know how it could have won a Bizarro award. What parts are Bizarro in this? Unamerica is a dystopian novel, with some weird concepts but aren't them dystopias always a bit strange?
I tried my best to keep going, looking for a twist I might enjoyed. The only twist I found is the one where my eyes stop reading words and start skipping sentences until I barely know what I'm reading 😐 That famous magic trick that makes me put a book down immediately 👎
August 2, 2019
Unamerica reads like the culmination of everything Cody Goodfellow has been writing about for the last 20 years. It is a large and frenetic story, with many Goodfellow hallmarks: dark futurism, transhumanism, conspiracies within conspiracies, audacious visionaries, fanatical religious sects, wild psychedelic drugs, violent fast-paced action. Heady idealism clashes with brutal reality at every turn.
One area where Goodfellow especially excels is his caustic social and political satire. Unamerica is filled with it, and the incredible situations and conflicts Goodfellow sets up make perfect sense as the logical, horrifying end products of unfettered hypercapitalism.
Not a traditional a horror story, although there are horrors aplenty to be found. Not a traditional science fiction story, although I'm afraid it does too good a job in showing us the near future. Not a traditional thriller, but just try putting it down. At this point Goodfellow is a genre unto himself. Unamerica is his most potent distillation yet, a rollicking (and strangely beautiful) middle finger to those who would exploit the very real and growing underclass. Highly recommended.
One area where Goodfellow especially excels is his caustic social and political satire. Unamerica is filled with it, and the incredible situations and conflicts Goodfellow sets up make perfect sense as the logical, horrifying end products of unfettered hypercapitalism.
Not a traditional a horror story, although there are horrors aplenty to be found. Not a traditional science fiction story, although I'm afraid it does too good a job in showing us the near future. Not a traditional thriller, but just try putting it down. At this point Goodfellow is a genre unto himself. Unamerica is his most potent distillation yet, a rollicking (and strangely beautiful) middle finger to those who would exploit the very real and growing underclass. Highly recommended.
March 7, 2023
This book serves as a mute refutation of the rating system. For sheer ideas and scope, it's easily 5 stars. For how convoluted and sloppy it gets, I'd sleepy happily giving it 2 stars. But in the end, however sloppily it's told and how hard it is is to get through (it took me over a month to get through this book and it's not all that long), it's still chock full of unforgettable ideas, places, and people and even attempts, I believe, to discuss a larger Truth.
July 15, 2022
Cody in top form, delivering at once what's expected of him and the utterly unexpected. Mad thing.
July 4, 2019
It feels like July 4th is the right day to write this review. This July 4th in 2019 as America falls headlong into a foul soup of autocracy, theocracy, kleptocracy, kakistocracy, and just a pinch of seedy John Waters midnight movie era ick.
I’ve often said that in many ways Cody Goodfellow’s work reminds me of Hunter S Thompson’s. At his best he captures a similar giddy, frantic joy, somehow conjured almost as byproduct from railing against the awful reality being foisted upon the world. Reading All Monster Action I was reminded of the first hundred pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: it had plenty of that giddy frantic joy I mentioned, but it was also over fairly quickly, it said what it had to and got out.
If All Monster Action (or perhaps Repo Shark) is comparable Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I think Unamerica is comparable Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72: it’s longer, has many periods of that frantic joy, and also had much to say about the state of things in the United States both as they are and where they’re going.
Like much dystopian fiction, Unamerica does have some parts where reality has already beat it in presenting a worse reality than the one in the book: the images of the concentration camps we’re seeing on the news make some aspects of the giant Unamerica camp seem almost hopeful.
Everyone should read Unamerica. I can’t say that it will help stop the awfulness of what’s coming, but that future will at least be less dismal, as readers at least can have giddy joy to draw on while they pick their way through whatever rubble lies ahead.
I’ve often said that in many ways Cody Goodfellow’s work reminds me of Hunter S Thompson’s. At his best he captures a similar giddy, frantic joy, somehow conjured almost as byproduct from railing against the awful reality being foisted upon the world. Reading All Monster Action I was reminded of the first hundred pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: it had plenty of that giddy frantic joy I mentioned, but it was also over fairly quickly, it said what it had to and got out.
If All Monster Action (or perhaps Repo Shark) is comparable Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I think Unamerica is comparable Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72: it’s longer, has many periods of that frantic joy, and also had much to say about the state of things in the United States both as they are and where they’re going.
Like much dystopian fiction, Unamerica does have some parts where reality has already beat it in presenting a worse reality than the one in the book: the images of the concentration camps we’re seeing on the news make some aspects of the giant Unamerica camp seem almost hopeful.
Everyone should read Unamerica. I can’t say that it will help stop the awfulness of what’s coming, but that future will at least be less dismal, as readers at least can have giddy joy to draw on while they pick their way through whatever rubble lies ahead.
February 28, 2022
Man, Cody Goodfellow is one of a kind. What a knock out of a book, absolutely amazing!
August 9, 2020
By the time Unamerica debuted, I had never heard of Cody Goodfellow, but I kept reading glowing, effusive reviews about this book from other accounts on Bookstagram, so I finally had to check out what all of the hype was about. And man alive, am I glad I did. Unamerica is, simply put, one of the best books I've ever read, a massively entertaining, sprawling tale of an unthinkable government experiment gone horribly wrong.
First off, the basic set-up itself is one that hooks you in as soon as you read the plot description: who wouldn't want to read about an underground city, run by a shadowy government cabal intent on experimenting on its denizens with corporate products, where society's psychos, junkies, criminals, and general malcontents all struggle for control?
Second, in the hands of a lesser writer, Unamerica could be an interesting but clunky misfire, but Cody's got the masterful skills to turn this into an engrossing, one-of-a-kind read. This book is bursting with inventive ideas, and it perfectly marries serious and sometimes horrific scenes (such as a character's harrowing survival of riding a raft from Cuba to America or another character’s abusive childhood) with hilarious and low-brow concepts (such as bathrooms filled with oral pleasure machines, or a hulking goon who wears a special suit that allows him to walk around marinating in his own fecal matter named Mr. Chud). Throughout all of it, the prose crackles with expert precision. Page after page, I would smile with my mouth dropped open, thinking, "What he did there is just so perfect."
Lastly, Unamerica is a novel with some powerful themes going on, and it's unlikely you'll absorb absolutely everything going on through the first read -- it touches on capitalism, socialism, consumerism, illegal immigration, crime, religion, drug use, free will, revolution, feminism, societal evolution, and the death of the American Dream. This thing is a complex ride with no easy answers -- you won't find a simple parable here with pure good tangling with absolute evil. Nearly every character is flawed to some degree, and, without spoiling anything, certain plot developments unfold that leave the reader feeling ambiguous and uncertain.
Bottom line: Unamerica will burrow its way into your brain like a botfly, digesting the surrounding gray matter until you will be unable to think about much else during the duration of reading it and in the immediate aftermath of finishing it. Do yourself a massive favor -- track down a copy, throw some Massive Attack or Amon Tobin on the stereo, and let Unamerica enfold you.
First off, the basic set-up itself is one that hooks you in as soon as you read the plot description: who wouldn't want to read about an underground city, run by a shadowy government cabal intent on experimenting on its denizens with corporate products, where society's psychos, junkies, criminals, and general malcontents all struggle for control?
Second, in the hands of a lesser writer, Unamerica could be an interesting but clunky misfire, but Cody's got the masterful skills to turn this into an engrossing, one-of-a-kind read. This book is bursting with inventive ideas, and it perfectly marries serious and sometimes horrific scenes (such as a character's harrowing survival of riding a raft from Cuba to America or another character’s abusive childhood) with hilarious and low-brow concepts (such as bathrooms filled with oral pleasure machines, or a hulking goon who wears a special suit that allows him to walk around marinating in his own fecal matter named Mr. Chud). Throughout all of it, the prose crackles with expert precision. Page after page, I would smile with my mouth dropped open, thinking, "What he did there is just so perfect."
Lastly, Unamerica is a novel with some powerful themes going on, and it's unlikely you'll absorb absolutely everything going on through the first read -- it touches on capitalism, socialism, consumerism, illegal immigration, crime, religion, drug use, free will, revolution, feminism, societal evolution, and the death of the American Dream. This thing is a complex ride with no easy answers -- you won't find a simple parable here with pure good tangling with absolute evil. Nearly every character is flawed to some degree, and, without spoiling anything, certain plot developments unfold that leave the reader feeling ambiguous and uncertain.
Bottom line: Unamerica will burrow its way into your brain like a botfly, digesting the surrounding gray matter until you will be unable to think about much else during the duration of reading it and in the immediate aftermath of finishing it. Do yourself a massive favor -- track down a copy, throw some Massive Attack or Amon Tobin on the stereo, and let Unamerica enfold you.
January 22, 2024
I respect this book much more than I liked or enjoyed reading it. The story is about a protagonist (with a lot of names depending on the role he is trying to assume; for simplicity I will just call him Hatch, one of his names) who is trying to introduce a psychedelic drug that will revolutionize humanity in terms of its insight and people's relations to one another. Goodfellow creates a mostly imaginary land between the U.S. and Latin America populated by arriving immigrants, mostly illegal, called Unamerica.
I have stated these superficial plot points in much simpler terms than Goodfellow does. Goodfellow's writing is always oblique, so these points have to be mostly inferred from described events. Even though Goodfellow writes obliquely he is never quite obscurantist. I would have even more difficulty with that. However, his oblique writing is almost as annoying to me. Nevertheless, I was able to suss out a plot, and there is some suspense as we see Hatch's interactions with other characters and wonder if he will be able to successfully market his drug and if it will have the revolutionary effect predicted.
I think I might have enjoyed this book more if I had any interest whatsoever in psychedelic drugs, or altered states of consciousness, or if I thought any of it mattered as much as Goodfellow obviously does. The book is well written. Goodfellow's word choices and writing style are very impressive. I just wish he had applied them to a worthier subject than hallucinogens and illegal aliens, not that he ever really comes to meaningful conclusions about even these two topics. Some people get frustrated with this book and DNF it. I can understand that because a reader wonders why he keeps plodding along for 436 pages, but never really getting anywhere important with it thereby.
I have read one other Goodfellow work, an early science fiction short story he wrote that I gave four stars, and might at some point read another shorter Goodfellow work. He is a masterful and serious writer who when he has a more deserving subject than this book might have something very worth reading to say about that subject.
I have stated these superficial plot points in much simpler terms than Goodfellow does. Goodfellow's writing is always oblique, so these points have to be mostly inferred from described events. Even though Goodfellow writes obliquely he is never quite obscurantist. I would have even more difficulty with that. However, his oblique writing is almost as annoying to me. Nevertheless, I was able to suss out a plot, and there is some suspense as we see Hatch's interactions with other characters and wonder if he will be able to successfully market his drug and if it will have the revolutionary effect predicted.
I think I might have enjoyed this book more if I had any interest whatsoever in psychedelic drugs, or altered states of consciousness, or if I thought any of it mattered as much as Goodfellow obviously does. The book is well written. Goodfellow's word choices and writing style are very impressive. I just wish he had applied them to a worthier subject than hallucinogens and illegal aliens, not that he ever really comes to meaningful conclusions about even these two topics. Some people get frustrated with this book and DNF it. I can understand that because a reader wonders why he keeps plodding along for 436 pages, but never really getting anywhere important with it thereby.
I have read one other Goodfellow work, an early science fiction short story he wrote that I gave four stars, and might at some point read another shorter Goodfellow work. He is a masterful and serious writer who when he has a more deserving subject than this book might have something very worth reading to say about that subject.
May 9, 2023
I got steered to this by a list of recommended Horror books - and yes, it's kind of a creepy, dirty bathroom of a book - and it also seems to get touted as "unclassifiable" as a selling point. But I emerge from the gross bathroom feeling that whatever names you want to call it, or uncall it, it's SF.
Near and under the Mexico/US border is a vast Petri dish where the "undesirables" get to mold their own patchwork urban sprawl and everything's free...if you accept your bar code and serve in whatever experiment those in control above feel you are best suited for. There's drugs and religion, gang wars and violence. Into this murk comes a new drug, and a religion upgrade...
This was quick to remind me of Escape from New York, but with more intent to show how it all works, all fits together, all violates itself while being watched. Escape from New York swallowed Perdido Street Station and puked.
If you liked some or all of the following, you could visit the big bathroom in the ground:
High-Rise, Dr Bloodmoney or any Dick novel, the zombie novel Fiend, the Silo books (but again, sort of the flat, puked-up version), Kairos, the movie Brazil, or any sealed environment that gets ripe as it spoils, or any drug-induced nightmare that's crowded and just playing with you.
Near and under the Mexico/US border is a vast Petri dish where the "undesirables" get to mold their own patchwork urban sprawl and everything's free...if you accept your bar code and serve in whatever experiment those in control above feel you are best suited for. There's drugs and religion, gang wars and violence. Into this murk comes a new drug, and a religion upgrade...
This was quick to remind me of Escape from New York, but with more intent to show how it all works, all fits together, all violates itself while being watched. Escape from New York swallowed Perdido Street Station and puked.
If you liked some or all of the following, you could visit the big bathroom in the ground:
High-Rise, Dr Bloodmoney or any Dick novel, the zombie novel Fiend, the Silo books (but again, sort of the flat, puked-up version), Kairos, the movie Brazil, or any sealed environment that gets ripe as it spoils, or any drug-induced nightmare that's crowded and just playing with you.
June 3, 2020
"The Stormin' Mormon verses the Shamanarchist," in Unamerica.
Unamercia is an underground place (I won't say civilization) somewhere around the Mexican border. Inside we have Nolan Hatch aka Keller Cockburn aka Joaquin Betancourt and Jamie Blasco, The Green Man aka Soloman Lister and Orrin Litchfeild, Captain Virgil Greer, Sister Jude, Casper Childress and Leland too. The Secret Teacher may save them all but The Destroying Angels and Divine Evil might see it differently.
Tres Ojos might remove Hatch's fingernails and Hector Obregon II aka Ursula Obregon Uribe, La Toda Madre might have a falcon come out of the sky and fuck her silver headdress while wearing white opera gloves for the love of her father's cartel.
The inhabitants of Unamerica might end up to be females with trees growing out of their eyes.
Understand?
Good.
Unamercia is an underground place (I won't say civilization) somewhere around the Mexican border. Inside we have Nolan Hatch aka Keller Cockburn aka Joaquin Betancourt and Jamie Blasco, The Green Man aka Soloman Lister and Orrin Litchfeild, Captain Virgil Greer, Sister Jude, Casper Childress and Leland too. The Secret Teacher may save them all but The Destroying Angels and Divine Evil might see it differently.
Tres Ojos might remove Hatch's fingernails and Hector Obregon II aka Ursula Obregon Uribe, La Toda Madre might have a falcon come out of the sky and fuck her silver headdress while wearing white opera gloves for the love of her father's cartel.
The inhabitants of Unamerica might end up to be females with trees growing out of their eyes.
Understand?
Good.
August 23, 2021
I loved this book. I was first introduced to Cody Goodfellow from a short story in one of the Delta Green lovecraftian horror collections. His was the standout story so I hunted down what his other works are and ordered this one on a whim.
This is my first real dive into “bizarre fiction,” beyond the occasional short story and man this book was weird. It’s weird, and gross, gory at times, and a little uncomfortable in other times. The setting is dystopian and has very strong cyberpunk vibes.
Both of the factions at play in the story are really interesting, and as a frequent user of acid and shrooms myself Goodfellow’s vivid descriptions did tripping justice imo.
The ending went in a way I was not expecting, and managed to get even more leftist than the book already was.
Anyway, rant over, it was very good, go read it!
This is my first real dive into “bizarre fiction,” beyond the occasional short story and man this book was weird. It’s weird, and gross, gory at times, and a little uncomfortable in other times. The setting is dystopian and has very strong cyberpunk vibes.
Both of the factions at play in the story are really interesting, and as a frequent user of acid and shrooms myself Goodfellow’s vivid descriptions did tripping justice imo.
The ending went in a way I was not expecting, and managed to get even more leftist than the book already was.
Anyway, rant over, it was very good, go read it!
February 14, 2020
Caution: this book might melt your brain...but in the best way possible.
It certainly did mine. Since I just got my new replacement brain I can finally leave a review.
I am in absolute awe of this novel. So bizarre, so eerily prescient, so a twisted vision of a f-d up future, but also a brilliant snapshot of where we are now. As a lover of cross-genre work, this one has it all: crime, sci-fi, horror, "lit" and all mashed together and coexisting effortlessly together.
But writers (like myself) beware: There are just so many jaw dropping ideas off the table now. Mr. Goodfellow did 'em, they're done. They will not be done better.
So yeah...READ THIS BOOK
It certainly did mine. Since I just got my new replacement brain I can finally leave a review.
I am in absolute awe of this novel. So bizarre, so eerily prescient, so a twisted vision of a f-d up future, but also a brilliant snapshot of where we are now. As a lover of cross-genre work, this one has it all: crime, sci-fi, horror, "lit" and all mashed together and coexisting effortlessly together.
But writers (like myself) beware: There are just so many jaw dropping ideas off the table now. Mr. Goodfellow did 'em, they're done. They will not be done better.
So yeah...READ THIS BOOK
July 29, 2019
I only finished it last night but this book was fantastic. The writing was sensational and the ideas that were packed into it were brilliant. Definitely deserves a reread at some point, too. Maybe the only thing I'd fault it on was some of the characters felt a bit like sketches but there was still a tonne conveyed with delicate touches throughout and it didn't really detract, especially considering how unwieldy Unamerica (the location) was with so much going on inside. Cody Goodfellow just writes wonderful fiction. Can't wait to read more from him.
November 27, 2019
No other person in the world can split open your skull, scoop out your brains, throw them on the ground, and jump up and down on them quite the way Cody Goodfellow does. I like it when he does this to me, and therefore unreservedly recommend this book for any thinking person. And all of his other books for that matter.
January 13, 2022
I don't understand how Goodfellow comes up with this stuff but it's just brilliant. I wasn't particularly interested in the main character's story but I don't think there would have been too many better choices to introduce Unamerica because holy crap!
I don't particularly like dystopian novels but Goodfellow manages to make the setting interesting while still working in his satire.
I don't particularly like dystopian novels but Goodfellow manages to make the setting interesting while still working in his satire.
February 12, 2020
This is an utterly fantastic novel.
The language is rich, dense, reminicent of cyberpunk.
The plot is fantastic.
Hatch is a helluva narrator to live through. Lichfield is an almost understandable "villain."
HIGHLY recommended. Get this book immediately.
The language is rich, dense, reminicent of cyberpunk.
The plot is fantastic.
Hatch is a helluva narrator to live through. Lichfield is an almost understandable "villain."
HIGHLY recommended. Get this book immediately.
February 13, 2021
Brilliant book. Like Goodfellow threw every idea he had at it. Fast, weird, thought-provoking, violent, tender, vomit-inducing... Uniquely Goodfellow but like a sort of disciplined Pynchon meets Mieville’s Embassytown.
December 10, 2019
I loved this book. I do believe the author and I share some similar life experiences. Take the time to read this gem.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews