Review by Vg345 -- The Last City of America by Matthew Tysz

[Vg345]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Last City of America" by Matthew Tysz.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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This is a review of The Last City of America by Matthew Tysz, and whatever else can be said about it, this book sure is terrifying. I give it 2 out of 4 stars, mostly because I would advise the average human to stay away from it. There are some can of worms you just shouldn't open. Unless you want to be a paranoid and hopeless person who only sees potential evil in others, I would suggest not opening this book. You don't want your mind to wonder whether the person walking next to you, someone you hope to befriend, is suddenly going to lead a rebellion in a marketplace and shoot you in the head. I can't help having my suspicions about the author. Mr. Tysz, is suffering all you see in the world?

The Last City of America is, however, a psychological masterpiece. The book tells the story of post-apocalyptic America after a psychotic scientist decided that he wanted to ruin everything the world and its people stood for and created a virus to do just that. The virus was called Hephaestus and it made a big chunk of the population sterile. There was panic. There was fear. There was the apocalypse. America was divided into seven cities, all ruled by different governments, having different levels of corruptness in them.

If you're a student of psychology or psychiatry or psychoanalysis or literally anything else related to how the human mind works, this book might help you understand and experience -the way one usually experiences fictional works- some of the darker aspects of the subject. Cold-blooded murder, the bloodlust of revenge, rape and cannibalism are just some of the concepts this book explores. It shows how thin a line there really exists between good and evil and how hard it is to tell which side of the line a person is standing on.

The third person perspective the author tells the story in only emphasizes the creepiness and horror of the circumstances being described. The broken bits of narration this story is delivered in feels like jigsaw puzzle pieces falling into place and the complete picture is pretty darn ugly. It was a well-written narrative that used arguably extreme tools to get the horror across. I admire the realism in the personalities of the characters. Admittedly, they weren't very good personalities and maybe I would have enjoyed the book more if there was at least one acceptable character who didn't screw things up for flimsy reasons but it suited the whole worst-case-scenario thing this book has going on.

I did not enjoy being psychologically attacked for twelve hours. I did enjoy the suspense and the plot development in the first half of the book. Every tiny plot development that leans toward the good is tainted by a greater evil. Every good person is shoved into a chaotic mess of problems by their experiences and their peers which they usually choose to handle violently. To summarize, stay the hell away from this book unless you know exactly what kind of war you're jumping in the middle of.

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The Last City of America
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