Review: Survivor Song

5 stars. Well, in a world that has turned out to be pretty wishy washy, I can always depend on one thing: Paul Tremblay will stress me out. I have no idea how or why he managed to get things so right, nor why I decided to pick this up now of all times, but here we are. Survivor Song is, as expected, a brutal and tense book full of awful things happening to good people. It is full of pain and fear and inconvenient, unfortunate truths. It didn't fuck me up as much as some of his others, but yeah, it's an immersive nightmare, if you're into that sort of thing, which I am. Lol.

Dr. Ramola Sherman, already nervous about a new rabies-like virus infecting the human population in Boston, is thrown into an intense emergency situation when her pregnant friend from college, Natalie, is bitten by an infected man. The two of them realize they must navigate from an overrun hospital through an infested area to reach a safe clinic before it's too late, challenged at every turn by miscommunication, government failure, untrustworthy citizens, and Natalie's worsening condition.

Sound familiar? Yyyyyikes. But it's really good. This is probably going to come across as super presumptuous, but I think it's Tremblay's best-written book to date. It's very simple in premise and execution (sort of like an episode of The Twilight Zone or a less-darkly-comedic Creepshow), and he's lost a lot of the analogy-laden writing that weighed down previous books. It's just snappy and well-paced and very frightening. I would also say that he absolutely nails the balance between horror and heart, which is tricky and rare.

I also really admire his female characters in this one. Actually, all the characters. For such a short book, I feel like he committed a ton of time to research, not just the scientific/medical stuff, but the personalities and motivations behind the choices his characters make. You can absolutely expect the sort of grisly ending that would be inevitable in this situation, and Tremblay knows this, so he focuses a ton of effort on the journey we take to get there. And it works really, really well. By the time it hits, we care. A lot. It's really emotional.

The use of location and space in this reminded me a lot of The Stand, which puts you smack dab in the middle of Boulder, CO - street names, landmarks and all. I'm guessing the highways, hospitals and other areas featured are accurate, which makes this even more badass and wonderful. It lends yet another real life flavor to what is already a devastatingly real story.

I think we can expect that Paul Tremblay's work will continue to evolve and grow in new ways. I think we can also expect that no matter where he goes, he will always be reliable for a good, fucking good, scary story. Consider me a superfan.

Survivor Song on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads