James Knapp (1) (1970–)
Author of State of Decay
For other authors named James Knapp, see the disambiguation page.
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Works by James Knapp
Associated Works
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Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Knapp, James
- Other names
- Decker, James K.
- Birthdate
- 1970-04-23
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Occupations
- author
writer - Agent
- Ginger Clark (Curtis Brown, Ltd)
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Reviews
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 5
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 259
- Popularity
- #88,671
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 9
- ISBNs
- 12
This is set in a US which had been ravaged by prion disease (aka, Mad Cow), and in its aftermath, resulted in "no-man's-land" zones in which a weird mix of lawlessness, martial law, and gang warfare existed, depending on where in the zone you were. The main character, Alice, is the 17-year-old daughter of the owner of a large corporation who is going to revitalize one of the zones. Her father's passenger ship is shot down and she ends up alone on the ground and has to find her brother, escape the zone, and bring the truth of the corporate/government conspiracies of what is happening in the zones to light.
On a superficial level, I really enjoyed this book. It didn't pull punches. It wasn't pretty. People died and in not pleasant ways. Murder, attempted rape, cannibalism, and torture show up on the pages. Alice starts off the book as a very sheltered, very rich white girl and she has a pretty steep learning curve on what real life is like in Ypsilanti Bloc. As she's our POV character, the reader sees the Bloc through her eyes, and her realizations that the things she's been spoonfed to believe are not always true. She begins to realize there are layers of political and corporate conspiracies going on related to the Bloc, while seeing the "squatters" as not the worthless uncivilized masses they are assumed to be by the outside.
The plot moves along at a good clip and while reading, I really liked it. However, once I stopped being a passive reader and started probing deeper into the world-building, plot, and characterizations, I became less satisfied with the book.
The premise of this world is the prion epidemic that swept the United States. But it was never clear just why this epidemic resulted in these areas where people had to be evacuated from. As is stated many times in the book, prion sickness is not contagious - it is caused by eating contaminated meat. So without the need for quarantines or buffer areas, why the evacuations?
There was also this internal inconsistency related to how the people Alice encountered treated her given the world that Knapp created. This is a society which is ruthless, brutal, and hard. There is a brief mention of a mother selling her daughter. Basilio and Maya are also teenagers but are treated as adults by the gang they work for, and their age goes unremarked throughout the book. So why then is Alice's age something that other people in the Bloc mention? She's 17, yet the way some people remarked about her being "just a kid" made me want to picture her as 12 or 13, especially given a society in which children are by necessity forced to grow up very fast or they die. But her (white) youth is special and precious and remarkable when (brown-skinned) Basilio's and Maya's is not.
Lastly, the ending just left me completely unsatisfied. I get that Alice's journey in the Bloc is meant to pay homage in some way to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and the characters that Carroll's Alice meets in her travels never show up again once she leaves them behind. That worked for Wonderland - it does not work for No-Man's-Land. Because part of Alice's character growth is her personal realization that the people in the Bloc are just doing the best they can given the circumstances, and while there are some bad people, most do have reasons for doing what they do even if it may seem awful or inconceivable to her -- even the cannibals.
So, given all that, characters are left behind as she moves through No-Man's Land, except for her companions of Basilio and Maya. And especially since the book ended with
Perhaps there will be a book two that will lead to some resolution for the plot threads that were left dangling. Seiko Santana was this larger-than-life cold-hearted villain who never actually appeared directly, or was confronted and made to account for her actions. Maya and Basilio's futures are not anywhere near secure nor rosy, despite Alice's mom's assurances. And then there's that whole larger government/corporate conspiracy that Alice saw evidence of that needs to be resolved. So yes, I can definitely see more fodder here for sequels, which I would definitely be interested in reading.
Alice in No-Man's-Land, despite its shortcomings, is still a good read. I suspect the YA crowd, who devour post-apocs, would love this.
Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley… (more)