Review - Infected by Scott Sigler

Let me get something out of the way before I start: Scott Sigler doesn’t use English properly. Dare I say can’t use it properly. And it’s a real pity, because the man writes a mean story. His writing places him somewhere between King and Gaiman on my imaginary style chart, with short, punchy chapters, really cool imagery, and a good grasp of what turns a reader’s stomach. It’s all there; everything he needs for an awesome book. And then he goes and calls blisters on a man’s head “lecherous”.

I don’t know about other people, but that shit snaps me out of the fictive dream like a bucket of icy water to the face. See what I did there? By using simile, I effectively communicated the speed at which I am reminded of the fact I’m reading a book. This is another thing Sigler consistently fucks up, with silly comparisons like “His head pulsed like a dying star” and “Police dotted the lot like dark blue alligators sunning on a riverbank.” Had one of these phrases made it to the opening sentence of the book, Infected might have done very well at the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. As it stands, however, all they do is mess with the narrative flow and make an otherwise excellent novel into a bunny-hopping stylistic hodgepodge.

Anyway, let’s get to the story – a somewhat important aspect of a book that I seem to have neglected in my last few reviews. The premise is cool. A bunch of alien “seeds” invade Earth’s atmosphere and implant themselves in the skin of human hosts, turning these hosts into raving lunatics bent on fulfilling the mysterious ends of their flesh-bound guests. Enter chief protagonist, Perry Dawsey, host to seven of the rapidly growing triangular seeds and a strict proponent of retaining his hold on sanity. Unable to go to hospital because of paranoia induced by the seeds, Dawsey spends most of the story inside his apartment engaged in enthusiastic self-mutilation. Because you know he’s racing against the clock, you end up in the slightly disturbing position of cheering him on as he brutalises himself with various household objects, including tweezers, forks, steak knives, hotplates and, in a final horrific coup de grâce, chicken scissors. And this is great. It’s a horror masterstroke, in fact. It’s not just someone getting messed up in a typical hack ‘n’ slash while the reader winces and moans. It’s a man doing it to himself with the support of the reader, which in my opinion makes the overall psychological impact of the horror even heavier as you realize how fucked up it is that you’re excited to see the very thing that is supposed to be grossing you out. A sort of meta-horror, if you like.

Dawsey’s chapters are punctuated by other plotlines that slowly converge geographically on the protagonist’s apartment as the CIA investigates the violent acts of other seed hosts, as scientists try to figure out wtf is going on, and as Dawsey’s friend, Bill, tries desperately to reach him.

There is some inconsistent characterisation (one character who seems to shun foul language starts using it for no apparent reason), and some deductive reasoning on the part of the CIA and scientific investigators that borders on the humanly impossible. But the story is otherwise sound.

All that said, a dictionary and a (better) editor would have served Scott Sigler well. They might have made the difference between me now, in spite of the cool story, never wanting to read one of his books again, and a desire to continue to the end of the trilogy.

Here are some of my favourite language malfunctions from the book:

His arm bled like a proverbial stuck pig. (His arm cannot bleed like an entire pig.)

The scratches surrounded the welt like egg white around an overcooked yolk. (If the scratches were red then don’t use a simile with a different colour in it, you dolt.)

The steam hung like a wafting cloud that bent and drifted with his every movement. (Firstly, you just described steam again. Secondly, everyone knows what fucking steam in a bathroom looks like. Save your similes for something more difficult for the reader to picture.)

A twisted expression of wide-eyed rage etched the corpse’s face. (English 101: In the active voice, the thing being etched can’t be the subject of the sentence; it has to be the object.)

His voice sounded whispery, like windblown paper scraping against dirty concrete. (Gah!)

Farmland, forest, swamps, water . . . the three-hour drive from Mount Pleasant to Cheboygan was interrupted by little more than roadkill and highway-stop towns like Gaylord that presented a splotch of buildings and cars before they were gone, fading away in the rearview mirror like the vestiges of a tasteless dream that dissipates into the buttery solution of delicious sleep. (Really?!)

And from the afterword:

I consumed books like they were Pez.
(I'm now reasonably confident Sigler means he ate the books.)