Review
“Actual fresh food – I could see their fire and smell it cooking.” - Bruce Late at night a few Shoppers head for a multi-storey car pack after picking up last minute items at the local shopping mall. Paul has picked up a birthday present for his son at the last moment after being reminded of a birthday party the next day by his estranged Wife. Beth has taken her daughter Candice shopping for a few items to offset the boredom of Candice's grounding for doing the wild thing with her boyfriend and smoking some weed. Bruce is simply the sort of bogan who seems attracted to the worship of commercialism, while Harold, his wife, and grandson are picking up a few items on the way home one assumes. Naturally, this being a dark genre novel, all hell breaks loose as full grown trees suddenly erupt from beneath the carpark turning an everyday location into a real “urban jungle”. But nature isn't finished reclaiming the land as further trees explode upwards, undergrowth starts sprouting, and wild animals appear in the new jungle. A late night shopping trip suddenly becomes a fight for survival as a few people band together and face an even darker foe, each other. Civilisation has gone the way of a really extinct thing, let the savagery begin! Concrete Jungle is written in Brett McBean's no nonsense style of realistic Aussie horror mixed with the kind of nastiness that made Richard Laymon a must read for fans of darker writing. The book gallops along without bothering much in terms of being overly descriptive, for McBean like King story is everything, but providing enough details for the Reader to draw their own mental picture of the setting. Must admit I was wondering what might be hidden in the new growth and had this whole King The Mist thing going down till the Author demonstrated there's a bunch of worse things than “B” grade monsters. McBean is superb in getting across the confusion his major characters feel at their new reality, their gradual realisation that they are on their own and will have to learn to survive, and the advantage one character will take with the demise of civilisation and rise of savagery as the new order. It's an immensely satisfying read for those of us who have been deprived of our McBean fix, and while not perhaps being on the same metaphysical level as the excellent The Mother, still ranks up there with the greatest hits of Brett McBean. I was rocking to this one from first paragraph to last paragraph. What I particularly liked about the novel was that there was no explanation for the events the major characters find themselves in. The fauna simply was, shit happens, lets move along with the narrative and not bog ourselves down in unwanted theorising. McBean has his characters gradually coming to terms with the situation and as the novel progresses having to face the reality that no one is going to come to their rescue. It's the gradually whittling back of civilisation and expectation of the Authorities somehow wading in and fixing things proving false that is the true strength of the novel. What exactly would you do to survive in the midst of a situation that has no explanation? Beth lets out her inner savage only after both she and her daughter are victimised, Harold seems to have more of a grasp on reality and survival due to his military background, while Paul still clings to some semblance of society. Bruce of course simply reverts to the primitive and goes native with undue haste. As the character says himself, he hasn't got much to lose anyway. Concrete Jungle is apparently the first of a trilogy of novels Brett McBean has planned for his nature runs amok series, this could explain why the novel finishes where it does with a lot left unexplained. I would imagine we might go beyond the confines of the carpark in the second book to see just what's happened to the rest of Melbourne and whether or not the green madness extends right across the Australian Continent. Regardless of scope I'm for one am saving my pocket money in anticipation of future titles. Brett McBean has thrown up on the virtual blackboard an interesting question, can civilisation be measured by the actions of those who no longer live under it's protection? I'm just getting this in before anyone asks me for a comparison to Scott Smith's The Ruins, hey that book also involves flora. While I enjoyed Scott's novel, did I note a slight racist undertone in it? - and to a lesser extent the movie made from the book, I have to say Brett McBean is a far better writer than Scott, and Concrete Jungle does not rely on a series of gross out scenes to get the job done. McBean's characters are realistic, Scott's are obnoxious charactitures. Tasmaniac have outdone themselves on this release surpassing anything else they have released to date. Not only do we get great cover artwork but we also get a series of pencilled drawings through the novel, always a welcomed inclusion in a Tasmaniac publication. But it doesn't end there, if Concrete Jungle is the main course then Tim Kroenert provides the dessert with the short story Lullaby and Nate Kenyon provides the coffee with The Cage. Both excellent short stories are set in Brett McBean's Concrete Jungle universe and I for one would not be against seeing a future anthology set in the same time and place. Brett McBean trims the foliage around about here, worth checking to ensure you are up to speed with new releases in the Concrete Jungle series. If after a copy of Concrete Jungle then head on over to Tasmaniac and see if any are available. As usual for a Tasmaniac release we're talking very limited print runs, so get in ASAP to avoid disappointment.
ScaryMinds Rates this read as ... I would trample my best friends to get to a copy of this book!
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