Falling to Pieces: Dissolvers Book Review

Meanwhile, cut to Ben, his little sister Mel, his friends Will and Steph, and a girl named Sukie, all of whom (sans Mel) are embroiled in a vicious love triangle. Y’see, Ben and Steph are implied to have had a relationship in the past, but Ben still has feelings for Steph, and Steph still has some slight feelings for Ben. But, you see, Steph is currently going out with Will, who is apparently the only person that is oblivious to the fact that Ben and Steph still have feelings for one another, and neither Ben nor Steph want to hurt Will’s feelings by doing the sneaky behind his back! Throw in the fact that Sukie is hopelessly (and not even remotely subtlely) into Ben, who does not reciprocate those feelings, and crickey, it’s all very dramatic. Ben and Steph have a little chin wag that ends in near-tears on bonfire night, and after being dragged off by Sukie and given the third degree, he has the the “It’s not you it’s me/If you change your mind give me a call” talk with her. This also ends poorly, so he heads on home whilst Sukie decides to chill by a dying fire on a beach in the middle of the night because that’s a very normal thing to do. Unfortunately for everyone, things go from bad to worse, as Sukie is implied to be torn appart by something before she even makes it back home that same night, and one of the teachers at the school they all go too just sort of melts during the Year 7 assembly at the school all of the main characters (sans Mel) attend the next day. Said Year 7‘s are even ferried off in a bunch of army vehicles to somewhere, prickling Ben’s “I smell a conspiracy” senses (Ben's a bit of a conspiracy nut). His school is shut, Mel was nearly approached by a ‘Tramp’ that moved not entirely unlike a zombie, and their mum is stranded a few towns over, and to top it all off, an unknown man tries to break into Ben and Mel’s house (implied to be the ‘Tramp’ from earlier), ranting and raving about a ‘gift’ he wants to share with Ben, banging against the front door. Ben rams an umbrella through the letterbox- and the unknown visitor as well- and bears witness to the guy dissolving on his front step, thus justifying the ridiculous name the zombie-stand-ins are given and serving as a title drop that will continue to be dropped like its over compensation night at the Dubstep Comprehensive. The following day (after calling the Police didn’t work out, as is often in this type of story), Ben and Mel head over to Will’s, finding Steph has holed up there, and the group assess the situation; ‘Dissolvers’ (the name given to this stories zombie substitutes) are everywhere, the Army are taking uninfected humans away in trucks, by force if nnescesary, there is a complete media lockdown and the only person that will print the truth is the owner of a tabloid paper located in a small hamlet next to town, the gang is forced out of the house as the Dissolvers descend upon them, and before long a biological warfare squad armed with flamethrowers descend on the town, under apparent orders to exterminate anything that moves that isn’t wearing a full body suit. The small town of Lynmouth has gone to hell, and the kids are caught in the middle.

The story is, for all intents and purposes, actually quite dark in concept. Characters are implied fairly obviously to have died or have caught the virus, both characters introduced soley to perish and characters you’ll come to know quite well when their time comes, a fact made all the more heavy when you remember that most of the central characters, even those outside of the main four, can’t be older then about 15 or 16 at the most. Descriptions or attacks are described in fairly gory detail- the word ‘blood’ is never mentioned, but ‘sticky fluid’ and ‘eyes bulging out of the sockets’ are fitting substitutes. One of the hallmarks of this fact are two segments that are told from the point of view of a Dissolver; in the first, we get both a rather depressing look at someone who only just starts to succumb to the virus, a ‘lovely’ description of the appearence of many of the Dissolvers that wander the streets, and the Dissolver getting ready to jump a little girl that starts coming downstairs. In a later chapter, the paragraph begins with the statement that overpowering the girl zapped the last of it’s strength, and recalling a memory from it’s human days that popped into it’s head, wherein it too was a young child playing hide and seek with it’s father, props itself up and prepares to take a death lunge at the ‘voices’ it hears approaching (those of the main characters.) Though the story itself doesn’t spend much time fretting over the vivid details or subtleties of either of these little insights and scenes, it still lays the ground work with the basics, and even for a teenaged reader, this is some very heavy stuff to choke down. To say nothing of the way the kind-of-love-triangle between the main characters and how they cope with the loss of the people they care about, and the stress of surviving when everything seems hopeless is handled, which again is pretty bare-bones and basic in the writing itself, but looking back on it with experienced and older eyes you can read a whole lot more into it, and it theoretically becomes a much more fleshed out and complex story then most of it’s contemporaries without actually trying to be. You know how some things are So Bad It’s Good? Dissolvers is kind of So Chained To The Formula Of The Story It’s Telling It’s Deep.

And yet, the actual writing itself isn’t exactly going to win any ‘Best Prose’ awards. In some places it’s borderline condesending to read, and comes off less like a Teen horror and more like Baby’s First Zombie Apocalypse. Here’s a transcribed snippet from the book to illustrate my point;

At first light Mr Williams got up, shaved, showered and dressed. He went downstairs and made himself a cup of tea which he drank in the kitchen. Milord stretched out in the hall, nose pressed to the gap under the front door, heaving the occasional mournful sigh.

“All right,” Mr Williams said. “I can take a hint.”

Milord twitched his ears and wagged his stumpy tail.

Mr Williams rinsed his mug, put on his old green duffel-coat and lifted Milords lead from it’s hook on the hall stand. Milord sprang to his feet and pranced, tongue lolling in a dog-laugh. Mr Williams clipped the lead to Milord’s collar, opened the front door and stepped outside.

Flavor text can add a lot to a story, don’t get me wrong, but most of that entire paragraph is almost entirely unwarrented considering this character exits solely to die rather horribly in front of a load of 12 year olds. This being the only real Point Horror story I’ve ever read, I don’t know if it was a quirk of the writer, Andrew Matthews, or if all the stories were like this, but I remember thinking the writing seemed childish in places even back when I first read it. To be fair, this is a story aimed at an audience younger then I am, and that probably demands much less from their prose then I do, so I'm probably the wrong person to critique the way the story is written. But for a book that's aimed at (I assume) 14-16 year olds, it still feels a little simple, for lack of a better term.

Overall, Dissolvers is largely inoffensive, bordering on quite enjoyable, and definately better then many of it’s contemporaries, even if by pure accident. Although for all of the heavier elements it brings into play, don’t expect to get much more out of it then an hour or two of mindless shlock horror.