Infected in 'Murica!

English Edition.

Infected by Scott Sigler.

My mind is quickly erasing this experience, so here is my two cents.

The first time I read book 1 was with a very cynical eye, so I thought it was very funny and I planned to read the rest in the series, but it took some time to get book 3. Back to present time, 3 books on my hands and starting over… well… that was an experience. Didn’t remember WHY I thought it was funny. It was fun for all the wrong reasons, to say it shortly it is a cringe-fest. If I rate it for the morbid fun, it would get 3-4 stars, but is it a good book? Of course not. It felt a lot like those 80s-90s terrible action B-movies: cringe-fun.

Well, that isn’t bad at all, unless… if you look a bit more closely (not much really), peculiar waves below the simplification of clichés appear.

Let’s take a look to our cast, shall we?

• The very white (like… super white) jerk misogynist (not recovered) jock with anger management issues (recovered for a time, Hallelujah!)

• His funny friend.

• Infodump.

• The ambitious Latin scientist, wannabe lead Karen boss.

• The effeminate but surprisingly straight scientist, unsurprisingly passive.

• The yummy Black agent.

• The stoic racist badass ex-vet turned CIA agent that survived the worst pain of all: having a lesbian daughter (his baby girl, of course).

• The young Black agent, beloved partner of our main agent (yes, the racist one and no, it isn’t ironic here, more on this later).

• The xenophobic police officers, ready to serve and protect.

• Infodump.Until.You.Choke.

• Retards, gooks, bull dykes appearing by mention.

• Media references… like f**k descriptions!

• The cringy language all doop de di doos and awesomesauce.

Setting. In 'Murica (yes, that dreamland country of some, not the same as the US).

So far, it looks like a cringy character list, but it is a lot more: a racist, homophobic, misogynist (choose your pick) mode that tries hard to appear the contrary; using the logic that it isn’t racist because A) It contains pseudo-developed Black characters B) The stoic agent clearly cares (of course, in a manly, very manly way!) for his partner. Same goes for the other picks, and by way of doing this, you can spit all the racist (et al) crap because you are safe now... sure. A bit worse, it is like a “guide to care for your racist (et al)”. It´s ok, care for them as you would care for someone who has stinky feet or bad handwriting… sure. But hold on, some may say… there is a Latin president! He makes fun of the angry-posting racist stereotype! Well, yeah. The thing is, it is not uncommon for some people to believe (or trying very hard to) themselves not ___ (insert pick) and hold some of these views, but is also used as a shield.

It is a healthy practice to separate the author from the characters and their dialogues, so it is curious to see the patterns and undercurrent views not so subtly displayed. Moving on.

Whatever Edition.

Book 2 and 3.

Book 2 wasn’t as fun; it gets old pretty quick and Book 3 was just… painful. The list of character clichés become more and more cartoonish (it is possible!), the infodump gets denser and the shield flimsier. Women in Book 2 (or 3? whatever!) for example, we have a lesbian heroic soldier, a woman as president and at the same time a very troubling handling of sexual harassment. One of the new characters is a male doctor with a PHD in sexual verbal harassment and the female characters find it funny, charming, effective (!!) and he is kind to remind us that women in powerful positions need someone to control them, at least in bed, and to call them “daddy”. Yeah, character development. And you can almost see the phallic tool… I mean pen, writing the womanly thoughts of a character that finds herself in top of a situation having no better way to phrase it as, quote:

“She was the man, for lack of a better term…”

Of course, a better term can’t be found… right?

The rain was prettier Edition.

We could go on and on with the troublesome situations, the humongous infodump (someone give him a cookie, have mercy!), the characters caricatures, but it is pointless. It was fascinating at some point to see this kind of mechanic at work, but when you see that there is no better way for a father in the book to describe very casually his teenage daughter but as “hot” … well.

And then...

Mind you, this is my tired opinion, lots of people had a blast with these books. Anyway, this is one of the few occasions in which I welcome the fuzziness of oblivion washing over my mind.

Quick tip. 

If you are not sure or unfamiliar with the term 'Murica, I highly recommend watching this video: America, F**k Yeah. If you are familiar with the term, watch it too, it is awesome!