M. F. Korn

This could have been a great book with the help of a good editor. Chapters of “authentic” New Orleans vernacular mixed with miss-spelled and mistyped text blurred the line between what was intentional artistic speech rendering and what was an honest mistake of word usage. I found myself marking up the book with a red pen as I read it. If it was just an occasional mistyped word I could have ignored it, but there were two or three typos in every paragraph. “Plaque” instead of plague.” “Sever” instead of “severe.” And on and on and on. It was distracting.

Ignoring the technical problems, “Skimming the Gumbo Nuclear” is an entertaining story of an end of the world pandemic plague, radiation and chemical disaster, and zombie mayhem. I did think that some of the plague descriptions bore an uncanny similarity to Stephen King’s book: “The Stand.” Valiant attempts are given at paying homage to Milton and T.S. Eliot, but the overall writing of the book doesn’t hold up. Korn’s writing is at least scannable, which is more than can be said of some of his Bizarro fiction contemporaries.… (mehr)