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horrifyingthought t1_j4u7rpw wrote

It's not meant to scare you...

WWZ is a phenomenal book, not because it is "scary" but because the author is PHENOMENAL at envisioning a world infested by zombies and recounting it though flawed narrators.

It's a masterpiece that wasn't setting out to accomplish what you were looking for is all.

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idrinkkombucha OP t1_j4u8qeo wrote

That’s fair! But even without expecting to be scared, I think the story relies on the flawed narrators too much and lacks a plot and character development, which negatively impacts my engagement with reading, because essentially, I don’t care.

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horrifyingthought t1_j4ubpvp wrote

... that just means the book wasn't for you. Doesn't mean the book was bad. You wanted a single protagonist in a scary story. The rest of us were excited to find incredible world building through the eyes of many individual participants.

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gardenomette t1_j4ucdso wrote

Just because you like it, doesn't mean the book is good. Goes both ways. No need to be condescending.

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BlacktailJack t1_j4x3vt8 wrote

I have some trouble seeing how the person you're responding to is being condescending, unless you're reading into that ellipsis pretty hard (which is possible! punctuation in text-based communication has become so loaded linguistically, in fascinating ways.) This person hasn't told OP that they can't feel the way they do, just that their experiences aren't universal or objective, and they weren't especially impolite about it (again, unless we're choosing to read a significant amount of tone into that ellipsis.)

That said, I agree with your initial statement. Of course subjectivity goes both ways; it's a functional impossibility to determine if a piece of media is objectively good or bad, because no media can be interpreted through a totally unbiased lens. OP's perspective is valid, just stated in a way that's probably gonna rankle people who enjoyed the book.

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superhappy t1_j4yar2r wrote

That’s like saying you don’t like a movie with an ensemble cast because you like movies with a focus on a single character. That has nothing to do with the quality of the film, just your preference of structure? It’s like saying you hate Rashoman because it has multiple flawed narrators recounting their side of the story - it is kind of a meaningless critique.

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idrinkkombucha OP t1_j4ybbeu wrote

Not at all. I loved ‘The Stand’ and other novels with a diverse and large cast. The difference between those stories and this one was - the story. Those had cohesive stories with a plot that built and arced. This book had zero story and no focus and no movement, just endless exposition.

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