Chris Blocker

Severance is one of those stories that is hard to nail down. It's largely post-apocalyptic, yet it has a very contemporary feel to it. It's dark and yet it's darkly comic. It's painted as a straight-forward dystopian tale, yet it may be an allegory for the way we live. It's meandering while focused. It's terrifying, it's sleep inducing. It's great and it's really not all that good.

For all the positive things I can say about this novel, I think the reason I'm also ambivalent toward it is due to the unevenness of the book. Perhaps there is some filler where there should have been more character development. I didn't really feel invested in these characters, and some of them were little more than tropes. When dealing with characters who are facing life and death, it's important for a reader to believe in what's at stake. For the most part, I didn't. The purpose of these characters was largely to move the plot forward.

Where the novel succeeds, however, is in its world building and its larger story. The parallels that are drawn between the capitalist world of Candance's past with that of her plague-infested present are brilliant. The pandemic that sweeps the world in Severance causes its victims to repeat menial tasks without thought. This continues until they finally expire. Thus an avid reader may turn the pages of her favorite book without reading a word for days. A taxi driver may drive his same route, even picking up passengers, but all without a thought or care, day and night, until his body just gives out. And that's where this story wonderfully elicits questions of how allegorical this whole story is.

My opinion of this slim novel swayed throughout. I really liked parts of it—thought it was brilliant at times. Other parts were just a bit too unsophisticated. In the end, I guess I feel so-so about it. It certainly didn't help that the final third of this novel came across as rushed and formulaic. This was the part of the story where I felt any decent author of dystopian fiction could've stepped in and done an equally commendable job. It's an ending that should satisfy readers of the genre looking for a piece of action that is familiar, but as a reader looking for something original or thought-provoking, I felt it was a let down.

Severance is an easy read and one that I would recommend to readers of dystopian fiction. Other readers could probably adopt a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward this one and be fine.