After Human

by Michael Cross

Book Overview

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS NOT WITH A BANG BUT A RERUN...What if the apocalypse had come and gone and no one noticed? What if the human race were already extinct but no one bothered to tell it?... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786012757
• ISBN13: 9780786012756
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Pinnacle
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 0.8" x 4.5"

Customer Reviews

Corrosively thoughtful

I picked this book up because I was in the mood for some violent horror, and this book looked like it fit the bill. What it did was meet my expectations beyond anything I imagined. I will not make the mistake many reviewers do (well, hopefully it is a mistake) and give away key plot points. Let me say this. This is about the human condition, and perception. What we perceive to be real, what others perceive, what is right, what is wrong, what matters, what does not, why it does, what is on the other side, what is on this side, you get the picture. Then it puts those thoughts through a wringer insulated with barbed wire and acid. Every step of the way it challenges you. When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears. What if you're ready, and there is no teacher? Read this book. Then think about it. Put it away for a while. Then read it again. This book is where fiction should be heading.

Landscape of the really strange...

I picked up this book expecting a typical vampire tale and it seems like that's just what it's going to be for about 50 pages or so. Then everything twists, and I mean *really* twists, in the weirdest possible direction. This is less of a vampire novel than a psychotic prose poem of human depravity and evil. The author seems to be invoking a post-apocalyptic world where no one even seems to realize or care that the apocalypse has long come and gone. Everyone worships an iconographic media celebrity/intelligence chief named Nikka Seven who's sort of like a kinky Egyptian priestess. She travels through the night in a long black limousine kidnapping men so she can turn them into women in her underground pyramid crypt. (see what I mean by weird?) Meanwhile, she's the love-object of two men: her loyal knight-in-black armor, Mahoney, and a disaffected vampire named Caleb who's supposed to be stopping a renegade messianic vampire named Io who's one of the most (...) fictional characters I've ever encountered.The main plot-sort of-seems to center around the sacrifice of the kidnapped princess of England that will be broadcast live via internet from a Stonehenge that may or may not be real. For that matter, the sacrifice itself may not be real, and one of the points the author seems to be stressing is exactly this: is anything real? There are countless murders, mutiliations, and tortures described throughout this book, all interspersed with insane rants against the entire human species. One of the highlights, or low-lights, is the generic suicide note that readers can apparently tear out of the book to use for their own suicides.The writing in this book is several cuts above the typical "horror novel" fare, so readers should be prepared for some style with their slice-and-dice. This is a thinking (...) novel and one that any fan of say Lautreamont or Sade or Bataille will want to have on their shelf.