Book Review: Bat Out of Hell by Alan Gold
A review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Bat Out of Hell: An Eco-Thriller by Alan Gold
Genre: Thriller
Series: Stand Alone
Publisher: Yucca (9/1/15)
Author Information: Website
Bat out of Hell was pretty scary, though not in the way I expected. Going in, I don’t know what exactly I was hoping for. An apocalyptic-type thriller novel, perhaps? Or a science fiction with a horror spin?
The story ended up being neither of those. I attribute my first impressions to the somewhat misleading book description, which I think overplays the urgency of the premise. I expected a nightmare scenario in which humanity was dying by the millions to a new Black Death. In truth, the book isn’t so much about the plague than the social and political games that surround it. It’s also not really a sci-fi or techno-thriller in the vein of Michael Crichton or Douglas Preston. Even though the tagline says “Eco-Thriller”, I wouldn’t say suspense and excitement are the book’s main elements.
Oh but there are plenty of cool things about it, all right. Like I said, the premise is pretty frightening. All around the world, outbreaks of infectious diseases are happening all at once, and not just in third world countries or rural areas either. London gets hit. Then a built up neighborhood in New Jersey. The UN quickly puts together a first-response team and dispatches them all around the world to find out what’s going on. The diseases have to be spreading through a vector, and scientists narrow it down to bats. (Or birds. A stunning amount of time is actually spent by characters in the book hotly debating whether or not it’s one or the other.) The point is though, infectious diseases are scary as hell, and they make great topics for Horror/Thriller novels. That’s the reason I was originally drawn to Bat Out of Hell and why I wanted to read it.
Of course, there were also parts of the story that just didn’t work for me. But that doesn’t mean they won’t work for you. Truth be told, I find books like this very hard to review, because its style and structure (and genre, arguably) don’t mesh too well with my own reading preferences. That’s not the book’s fault, obviously. For this reason, I’m going to leave my rating off for the blog.
Essentially, I enjoyed the overall premise of the story. It’s smart, it’s entertaining, and the subject matter is fascinating. However, there are several things I felt could have been changed in order to make it a better and more exciting read. First of all, I wish there had been a lot more focus on the diseases themselves. The story didn’t cover too many outbreaks to begin with, and every time we saw one, only a few pages were devoted to the entire cycle of infection, immediate deaths (inevitably the scenarios all involved children), and eventual fallout. And then without skipping a beat, we are right back to the politicians and the special interest groups shamelessly spinning the situation.
Hence, my second observation: from politicians to leading scientists, animal rights activists to celebrities – everyone seems to get their chance to weigh in on the worldwide health crisis. Everyone except the ones who are the most affected. Where are the victims’ voices? The family and friends of the dead? Seems like a gross oversight to exclude their perspectives and influence on the global discourse.
Thirdly, I thought the narrative greatly oversimplified certain elements of the story. For example, birds are lovely and cute. So the idea of killing them en masse to prevent them from transmitting deadly diseases to humans would be met with outrage and resistance, to the joyful glee of the activists behind Citizens for Humane Animal Treatment. Bats, on the other hand, are icky. So if it turns out they’re the culprits, no one cares. There’s also the disturbing implication that most people will blindly follow the random claims of pop stars and Hollywood actors over the word of scientific experts who actually know what they’re talking about. Maybe a some people, but I think most folks tend to trust the epidemiologist with the PHD over some aging metalhead, no matter how famous they are — especially when it comes to matters of health. Speaking of which, where’s the internet and social media? Something like this should have had millions talking about it, but once again we’re only getting the perspectives of the elite, the world leaders and the CEOs and the celebrities who treat the population like lemmings — point in the direction you want them to go and they will follow – but reality just isn’t like that.
In the end, I think what I wanted was a more intense and more personal story. Still, I thought the book was interesting and devoured it quickly because I really wanted to find out what happens. Something tells me Bat Out of Hell might be somewhat of an esoteric novel, and certainly if you have an interest in stories about outbreaks and infectious diseases, it’d definitley be worth giving this book a shot.
The BiblioSanctum 
I think there’s a fine line with eco-thrillers between getting their message across and sounding preachy (not sure if that’s really the case here.) Seems to be hard to find that right balance. And I have to say, I think hearing from the victims would be a better choice than activists.
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There were definite preachy moments. Oddly enough, I wasn’t quite sure what the author was actually preachy about, he seemed to bounce back and forth on both sides and I wasn’t sure if that was something deliberate to try to “balance” out the biases.
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And I forgot what to say…I blame bloglovin, been trying to get into everyone’s blogs for ages
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Try using feedly, best reader I’ve used since Google reader 🙂
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I have to try it,since all my blogs where there, I could do nothing
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This was definitely on the preachy side for me. Your review was actually pretty nice. I had big issues with the writing and editing, as well as the absolutely hilarious role of the President. I am also still laughing over Debra’s sex-crazed personality. I’ll definitely talk about those things in my review:-)
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Oh my god, if I had to hear about how devastatingly handsome and muscular the president was ONE MORE TIME I was going to rip the book to shreds.
That and the writing and how cartoony everyone felt are all problems I found with this book, but I decided not to go into them or else we’d be here forever 😛
So I just went with the general things. I can’t wait to see your review! I’m chuckling at how you thought my review was “actually pretty nice” but you rated it on goodreads higher than me 🙂
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I know, sometimes I wonder if my ratings match my reviews, ha ha. I guess to me a 3 star review means it was just OK. I was highly entertained by this book, but not for the reasons the author intended! I think that’s why the three stars. But seriously, Debra wanted to get into the pants of every “tall handsome muscular guy” she met;-)
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I was looking forward hearing about this one. A story about a plague hitting the world that doesn’t turn people into zombies?! REVOLUTIONARY XD I’m not keen on idea of focusing more on the politics that the science and effects of the disease, but I still may look at some other reviews.
Revenant side note: I recently started playing Plaque Inc. on my iPhone again.
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Haha, at the time of this writing I think the only ratings on GR are from me and Tammy. I can’t wait to see her review! Hers will probably be more detailed. Like she said, there were a lot of other little things about this book that were bothersome, but I tolerated most of them. The three major points I mentioned in my review though, not so much.
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Well of course I like books about outbreaks and infections…are you saying there are people out in the world who don’t?
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I don’t know about that, after all these years I still can’t watch Outbreak without feeling queasy 😛
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I love outbreak stories. They scare the hell out of me. Focusing on the politics instead of the diseases reminds me of Mira Grant’s Feed. That was part of why I wasn’t a fan of that one.
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If you couldn’t do Feed then you definitely wouldn’t like the politics of this one. It’s pretty much all politics, very scarce on the thrills, sadly.
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Sounds like a case of a great core idea that’s partly undermined by faulty delivery, but still it might be worth a try. After all, who can resist a world-wide pandemic?
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Yeah, I would love the story if the entire novel wasn’t written with tone of a political manifesto. It was still entertaining, though like Tammy said, maybe not for the reasons intended 🙂
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