Jam

It was good.

Jam / B00A7H2E3WI loved Yahtzee Croshaw's first book,  Mogworld , and I went into Jam expecting to love it and I *did*, so at least I'm both consistent and predictable, lol. (And I'm already on tenterhooks hoping that Jam will come out on audiobook soon so that I can listen to it for a second read-through.) But let me also just state upfront that Jam is not going to be for everyone (though nothing ever is), and then I'll get to why.Jam is essentially a zombie apocalypse story with the zombies replaced by man-eating jam. Our point-of-view character wakes up one morning to find that his city was covered with three feet of jam while he slept and now it's up to him and the remaining few survivors to paw through the wreckage while navigating the rooftops of a ruined city. And this whole setup reminds me of one of Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation reviews -- I think it was one for Left 4 Dead -- where he theorized that as long as an author can re-create the tension and horror of the zombie apocalypse, you can replace the zombies with koalas and you'd still have a zombie story on your hands. And that's what Jam essentially is: a proof of concept that is delightfully grim and utterly original.If you've read Mogworld, you'll already be familiar with Yahtzee's style of writing: Jam is semi-serious, but with a strong undercurrent of parody and sardonic wit. Most of the main characters are recklessly stupid and detrimentally self-involved with their personal preoccupations to the point where they routinely prioritize trivial impulses over their basic survival. And in some ways, the villains are differentiated from the protagonists ONLY by a matter of degree: when everything goes all Lord of the Flies a few days after the apocalypse, there's a strong implication that the villains just spiraled down a little faster than the majority of our protagonists.What keeps the novel from being a bleak indictment of humanity (unlike your usual Lord of the Zombie Apocalypse novel) is the humor that saturates every page. The protagonists bicker amusingly with each other as they work around each others' shortcomings, and with dialogue that had me cracking up on numerous occasions; the villains are cartoonishly evil even as they shrewdly point out the flaws of the protagonists; and the apocalypse surges on around the confused and deeply distressed point-of-view character as he tries to adapt to the total destruction of everything he's ever known. It may not sound like a laugh riot, but it has the same delightful gallows-humor of Mogworld and I loved it: it's like if Douglas Adams wrote a zombie apocalypse with Arthur Dent as the POV character. And also there was jam.Having said all that, Jam isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea. Many of the protagonists really are (or eventually become) flawed, sexist, racist, stupid, and/or evil to the point where some readers aren't going to appreciate being forced to stick with them to the end; to continue the above analogy, picture Zaphod Beeblebrox slowly devolving from a sexist misanthrope to, well, significantly worse. The characters are frequently called out on many of their flaws, both by each other and by the narrative, but always in a humorously sarcastic way that doesn't really make way for catharsis or improvement. For myself, I found the dysfunctional dynamics of the group incredibly compelling to the point where I finished the book in a day (and enjoyed every minute of it), but I also recognize that dark humor surrounding dark characters isn't going to be for everyone. (Relatedly: if you require your zombie apocalypse novels to be inhabited by sensible characters, this isn't going to satisfy.)[SEMI-SPOILERS] Speaking of, Jam continues the Mogworld tradition of bittersweet endings where things are nominally fixed but still deeply, terribly broken. Now, granted, this is a zombie apocalypse novel and those are pretty much *guaranteed* to have bittersweet endings unless it turns out to have been a dream all along, but even allowing for the genre and the "sweet" part of the "bittersweet", there's still a profoundly sad note underlying the ending. As a reader, I didn't find the end dissatisfying, but ... it's not something that will sit well with everyone. Again, you'll probably be the best judge for yourself as to whether or not gallows-humor and tempered cynicism will be your thing or not. I offer no judgment on readers, either way. [/END SPOILERS]I genuinely enjoyed this book and (as mentioned) tore through it in a day simply because I couldn't set it down. The premise is delightfully original, the POV character is deeply sympathetic, and the main characters are flawed in that very special way where they would be utterly insufferable in real life and yet are amusing to follow in a novel just so you can see how badly they will screw things up and so they can all call each other out every five minutes (in a manner which suddenly reminds me of Brian Clevinger's 8-Bit Theater comics, which I also immensely enjoy). If you won't be put off by a little unrealism (in the world) and a lot of unreason (in the characters) in order to carry a lot of delightful gallows-humor, I absolutely recommend this book if only for the sheer uniqueness.~ Ana Mardoll

"Jam" is Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's second published novel, the first novel-length work he's written that doesn't feature pirates even tangentially, and whose protagonist is not named Jim. And I deeply regret to say that these are probably the most interesting things I can say about it.Ever since I was introduced to Zero Punctuation -- Croshaw's weekly video game review series -- I've been a fan of his work. I read and enjoyed his first novel,  Mogworld . I even dove in to his old Web site and read some earlier novel-length works of his entitled "Articulate Jim" and "Fog Juice." The man is a very engaging writer, an ascerbic and entertaining wit, and his gaming review is one of the highlights of my week. So I eagerly pre-ordered "Jam" when it was announced, and set about to reading it the day it arrived...I imagine the way I feel about "Jam" is something like the way Croshaw himself felt when he reviewed the game "Brütal Legend" -- a work by a respected author/designer that he ended up not really liking -- and find myself wanting to crib notes from that very review: "Do I make excuses for old time's sake and compromise my integrity, or jeapordize my chances of being invited to his birthday party?""Jam" opens briskly enough, with the protagonist Travis in the first two pages witnessing his flatmate Frank getting devoured by a three-foot layer of carnivorous strawberry-scented jam that engulfed the city sometime early that morning. What survivors Travis encounters are fairly typical and variably neurotic young city dwellers wholly unequipped to deal with the Internet momentarily dropping out, much less an ongoing apocalypse. There's Tim, another flatmate and support character with no memorable characteristics whatsoever; Angela from one floor down, a journalism major obsessively video recording everything as if she were making a documentary; Don from the top floor, easily the most memorable for his single-minded devotion to recover a software build from work, with all other considerations secondary; and Mary, a Goliath Birdeater tarantula. The story follows this small group of by-chance survivors as they attempt to make their way toward perceived safety in the city's center over the world's largest and most hardcore game of The Floor Is Lava.Unfortunately, the most interesting characters -- enigmatic pseudo-military types known only by the names X and Y -- appear only occasionally and far too briefly, just long enough to engage interest, and then disappear again.Ernest Hemingway is widely quoted as saying, "Write what you know," and what Croshaw appears to know is grindingly sarcastic (passed off as ironic) 20-something slacker/hipsters perennially hanging out at the local mall, and low-level white-collar office sociopathy. Every idea in the book -- from the jam-based apocalypse to the way the camps of survivors apply their extremely specialized, and extremely useless, skillset and worldview to get on -- is interesting and clever on its own. Even individual passages are clever and funny. Sadly, for me, they never seem to gel into an engaging story, and we're just left with a 398-page pile of clever bits.Honestly, I really, really wanted to like this, because I know Croshaw is capable of good work, and I've enjoyed all his other stuff. And because I know he has done better, I find myself wondering if I'm the one who's missing some crucial life experience or cultural narrative that prevents me from appreciating "Jam" properly. But I simply failed to connect with it. It's not that it's bad; it's simply not as engaging or as memorable as I wanted it to be. It's been barely three weeks since I read "Jam," and I've had to refer to the book to remember even the characters' names. Yet it's been months since I read "Mogworld," "Articulate Jim," and "Fog Juice," and I can still remember many character names and specific moments from those stories.If you are looking for a first exposure to Yahtzee's work, you are far better served reading  Mogworld , or viewing any one of his (as of this writing) over 270 Zero Punctuation reviews, and leave "Jam" for later.

I'm taking Travis, our protagonist, to be a commentary on the blandness of protagonists in general. In fact, his absence of personality is one of his only attributes. For the most part, his only function is as witness, to be the lens taking in the whole scene, and since there already is one of those present in a non-metaphorical sense wielded by one of the other characters, it reinforces his pointlessness. The whole story could be told without him in it without adding too much to the workload of the rest of the characters... which seems to be the idea.The book doesn't have the same rapid-fire domino drop of jokes and witticisms of Zero Punctuation, so if you're coming here thinking it will be just like his game reviews only bigger hence better, you may be a bit disappointed. But I think it's certainly worth taking on it's own merits. There were plenty of times I caught myself laughing out loud, looked up and saw the break room silent and staring at me. Any scene with the spider generally got me going. As far as thought provoking, there are little bits of insight here and there. I did relish seeing caricatures of slackers and hipsters and water cooler dictators inherit the Earth and variously doing themselves in.As romps go, this was a clever and enjoyable one. Each scene had me anxious to find out what happens in the next. Carnivorous jam... What a fun way for the world to end!

I suppose there is always the chance, considering the way Amazon's search functions are geared, that some people may be at this page that have not heard any of Yahtzee Croshaw's internet reviews named Zero Punctuation. For the unititiated let it be said that these acidic and sometime unbelievably profane and vulgar snippets are guaranteed to make anyone with a sense of humour laugh out loud several times; not bad for a 5 minute review. As a fan of this web journalism it was with some trepidation that I ordered Croshaw's book. You know how it is when somebody who is really good at something decides to do something else and it isn't as good and you feel all cold and hollow inside as a result? Well, this is kind of what I was expecting to feel with Jam and....yeah sorry, but it did live up to that expectation.Structurally the book is sound. It has no slow sections and flows along quite nicely. My problem with the book were the characters themselves. The book is written in the first person of Travis. On his Zero Punctuation pages, Croshaw alludes to a negative self image and there is a strong suggestion that there is more than a little of Croshaw's wholly pointless self loathing written into this character. A central protagonist needs SOMETHING in him/her to make you want to finish the book. With this guy I just couldn't care less. It wasn't that he was particularly annoying, he was just completely without depth. At the end of the book I hoped to find that the character changed and developed into something, only to find that, no, the same guy continues in the same vain.This is forgiveable enough, but I am terribly sad that a man that is SO SO SO funny, and SO SO SO sharp - so much so that it is a miracle that he hasn't julienned himself already, seems reluctant to inject any of that excrutiating wit into his writing. I am certain that Croshaw has done this to distance himself from his fame online, but for me it is a step too far.Now, it is entirely probable that I have missed the point and that Travis', blah factor is some sort on subtle irony lost on a fat middle-aged man that ranks Holiday On The Buses among his favourite films. With this in mind, and in light of a seemingly indifferent review, I would actually recommend this book to fans of people like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. And at the risk of sounding like a patronizing old uncle, I do actually suspect that in time Croshaw could become quite a good writer. For me, he's not quite there yet though.

Science fiction used to be about taking real people and putting them in situations where the logical consequences of technology could play themselves out.Yahtzee Croshaw's "Jam" is a fine example of this. The protagonists are in the Australian city of Brisbane and faced with a problem, 3 foot of jam is covering the city. Carnivorous, semi-sentient strawberry jam.I found myself enthralled by the story telling and stayed up late reading it. This was because it's very much calling back to Asimov and Wyndham. Travis, the narrator of dubious reliability, isn't an action hero. Neither are they particularly competent. They're very much how I could see myself being if I was in this situation and the ingenious methods of getting around and coping with the problems again call to mind Verne and Defoe.Thoroughly enjoyed it.

I read this right after Mogworld (Yahtzee's other book) and I am a little disappointed with it. I found it hard to get stuck in to the story (pun intended!) as it didn't grip me in the same way Mogworld did. The first 50% of the book largely relies on the comedy situation of jam covering an Australian city. I will agree this is a funny idea, but in itself it doesn't support 200 pages of book.The characters in the book are very likeable and that's pretty much what kept me reading. There's a slacker as the protagonist and he has a rag-tag group of accomplices who are pretty interesting too. There's some non-main characters who are well written and have good plots of their own.Overall I didn't love this book. That's not to say others won't, it has high ratings from others on Amazon, but I'm not a fan.

It’s a ridiculous story filled with irony, corporations and man eating Jam.Do you want a realistic take on humanity facing an apocalypse? Then read Brave New World.Do you want a funny, sarcastic taken on what would REALLY happen if there was a jampocalypse? Then READ READ READ!

The end of the world by man-eating jam, strawberry scented death. Follow a crazy bunch of people trying to survive the apocalypse. Yahzee brings out all of his well-known cynicism and annoyance at the idiots of society to paint a bleak but maniacal look at how civilisation would play out. A fun book that you never really know what is coming next but shows the mental strain and changes that may take place. If you don't like drop endings though this may not be for you. You will be left wanting just that little bit more. I loved the references to Mogworld with some shameless self-plugging.