A Bookish Compulsion

This review also posted at A Bookish Compulsion


This was a freebie book I picked up somewhere along the way that struck my fancy to read on the long train ride out to visit my in-laws this holiday season.

When attempting to describe The Bane to my husband I said it was a post-apocalyptic where the humans were wiped out by a bio-enhancement that infected them with cybertronic parts. He came back to me with…so they’re basically cyborg zombies? Um…yes, yes they are.

The Bane straddles between post-apocalyptic drama, sci-fi and zombies, with an added romance reminiscent of a YA…complete with love triangle.

The world building in The Bane was well developed and the feeling of maintaining a desperate fingernail hold on humanity well portrayed. That said, it sometimes dipped into monotony; the first half of this book struggling to retain the status quo and the second longing for it.

I liked the characters in The Bane but was too often thrown from my suspension of disbelief in the details of both the characters and their history; I just couldn’t buy into many of the ideas put forth as fact in this world. I also tend to shy away from the all-too-often used love triangle and this book was a prime example of why. This trope was used as a crutch to create dramatic tension between characters; adding drama without really layering any depth into the story. This triangle in particular I felt was a wishy-washy prop for character development resolved in what felt to me like a cop-out eureka moment that was unsupported by the previous story. (Not that I felt the other choice would have been more supported; neither were developed to my satisfaction. Sad to say, at the end of this story I really didn't care who our heroine ended up with, having not become invested in the characters to such a degree that I had an attachment either way.)

While the story overall was an enjoyable read it had too many flaws to see me returning to this world.