Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw
Reviewed by Doc
I first became a fan of Yahtzee Croshaw by watching Zero Punctuation, his animated video game review blog. Since 2007, Yahtzee has talked about every important game to cross any gaming console or PC, and as advertised, he doesn’t stop for air. He’s known for descriptions like this one, where he compares Bioshock Infinite to its predecessors:
“The first significant way Infinite differs from the first two Shock sisters is that Bio and System were horror games in which you were late for the party and have to piece the events of the party on a gloomy hungover Sunday morning, whereas Infinite is a pulpy swashbuckling adventure and you’re just in time for the party because the party is you.”
Over the years, I have become rather attached to Yahtzee’s gift for humor & metaphor, which sports the intelligence of British comedy without being painfully awkward. Ever slow to research my influences, I recently found his personal blog (Fully Ramblomatic), revealing a new novel called Jam, produced by Dark Horse Comics! An unnoticed October 2012 release by a competent British-Aussie writer about an apocalypse caused by “a three-foot layer of man-eating jam” sprung to the top of my must-have list.
I was hooked from the moment I cracked it open. A wave of man-eating jam rolls through Brisbane during rush hour, wiping out all weekend warriors. What’s left is a veritable Lord of the Flies with hipsters, layabouts, bloggers and more all scrambling for resources and devising strategies for dealing with a surprisingly intelligent sticky predator.
Protagonist and young layabout Travis has a curious, childish nature that often frustrates the panicked strategists around him. I normally shy away from characters who are flying by the seat of their pants, but in a jam apocalypse, this kind of ignorant ingenuity fits like a hazmat suit made of plastic bags and duct tape.
At BookPeople, we like to play a game where we pick five coworkers we would most want to have with us in an apocalypse. It’s an interesting way to find out what’s important to us in the end, whether it’s power, ingenuity, or loyalty. As the only character who isn’t distracted with a secret plan, Travis longs for authentic connection, emotionally attaching himself via pet-projection to a large, exotic species of spider. I could relate to the depth of his longing for trust.
Jam reads quickly and cleanly, and I loved every minute. I think that Yahtzee wanted this story made into a game and ended up writing the book instead. Whether it was for lack of funding or lack of faith in gaming production, I’m glad it turned out this way. Instead of moaning about the graphics or the crappy AI that somebody else might have screwed up, I was free to enjoy the miracle of Yahtzee’s style in the comfortable playground of my own perfect imagination. For once in the world of gamers, it’s a novel for the win!
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Copies of Jam! are available on our shelves and via bookpeople.com.
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