As a starting point, it was impossible to suspend disbelief when I discovered this book centers on a character two parts buffoon and one part dictator who believes he owns our country thanks to a few backroom deals with various autocrats around the world (plus a special thank you to Deutsche Bank and Facebook). It is disappointing given the array of examples of finely constructed villains throughout literature to be offered one so completely devoid of any redeeming qualities that it beggars all belief.
While it is typical for this kind of thriller to continue to raise the stakes, I question the decision to include both a deadly pandemic and sweeping protests against police brutality that are then met with relentless amounts of police brutality. For that matter, the entire premise of the pandemic doesn’t make any sense. I mean, what country would dismantle all of its governmental functions, place stooges in charge of every government agency (and the Senate) with the explicit goal of making money for themselves and undermining the agency’s ability to protect its people in the case of a crisis? The narrative behind the spread of the pandemic itself is so poorly constructed—the administration didn’t bother to quarantine or restrict the travel of people returning from other countries if those people were easy to recognize as American citizens? As if being white, rich, and an American citizen makes them immune??
And then we are supposed to believe the administration would seriously offer, though it sounds like a parody, solutions to a pandemic along the lines of “cut taxes and regulations, destroy the environment, and block all immigration.” Are there any readers who would believe in characters this incompetent and immoral? I struggled to keep reading when the author thought it would make sense that any American leader would suppress all information about the virus in a transparent effort to boost the stock market, as if time would somehow stop at that moment. The author was so pleased with this scene that it was repeated with little editing in response to a not-especially-meaningful jobs report.
And it wasn’t enough to make visible the ongoing violence of anti-Black racism upon which this country was founded, but then the author decided, hey, let’s randomly impose curfews as a way to increase violent treatment of both peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders, as if the police were otherwise incapable of recognizing who was peacefully protesting and who was breaking windows with their skateboards (because it’s apparently confusing if the former is Black and the latter is white?) The entire novel is so chaotic, depicting what it might be like to live in a country dominated by selfish people with short attention spans and no awareness of history. I rate this book a 0 out of 5, and I beg the author to take a history class.
reader. writer. 