Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend (MJ Wassmer)

Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend
MJ Wassmer
Sourcebooks Landmark
Fiction, Humor/Literary Fiction/Suspense
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Dan Foster's life hasn't gone nearly how he hoped. Pegged as an advanced student from an early age, he should've been a grand success. Instead, he's staring down his thirties from a barely tolerable job, with little but a barely tolerable future stretching ahead of him. The best thing in his life is his girlfriend Mara, so this couples vacation to the brand-new, all-inclusive Tizoc Resort on a private island in the Bahamas should've been a dream come true. Maybe he'll even work up the nerve to propose.
The sun exploding put a definite damper on the fun.
With communications cut off and the wifi down, there's no way to call for help... or even know if help is available. Tensions are rising, the resort guests are fracturing into tribes, and a power couple consisting of a televangelist and the charismatic head of a popular personal improvement franchise/pyramid scheme are making a bid for absolute control, starting with a midnight raid that seizes all of the resort's food and medical supplies (and compromises the security team). Someone has to stand up and fight back, or at least find a way off the island. Will that someone be Dan Foster, or is he doomed to spend the end of the world as he's spent the rest of his life - failing?

REVIEW: Part social satire, part apocalyptic thriller, this is the kind of book that could easily fall flat on its face. Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend actually pulls off the balancing act it sets out to accomplish, creating quirky yet generally interesting characters and moving fast enough to glide over a few weak spots and logic holes while shining its spotlight on class warfare, social stratification, and other ways humans find to distract themselves from the bigger dangers threatening our world and species survival.
Dan isn't always the most likeable guy, but he is a fairly relatable one, at an age where society tells him he should be at his zenith yet feeling like he hasn't even tackled a molehill, let alone climbed a mountain. He takes out his frustration too often on other people, not in a violent way or even an intentional way, but tending to make judgements and sarcastic comments that cut off any potential to actually connect and relate. An exception is his girlfriend Mara, a woman who, as he says more than once, is always her: always compassionate, always acting to help people - even people she doesn't like, always thinking on how to do the best good, never dissembling or presenting a false front. Dan isn't even sure why someone like that would be interested in a guy like him, an insecurity that plays into more than one of his decisions: he becomes so fixated on proving that he's worthy of her love that he nearly destroys the part of himself that attracted her to him, so fixated on protecting her that he fails to realize she doesn't want or need his protecting, so determined that she, at least, will survive long enough to get back to her family that he almost sells out himself and everyone else at the Tizoc. He's not even quite sure himself what he's trying to become, chasing some nebulous, society-endorsed idea of a "real man" that he feels he has failed to embody; only later, after much disappointment, does he finally figure out who and what he needs to be, not just for Mara but so he can live with himself. He finds friends and a few enemies in the dark at Tizoc, including the gay couple next door, an older pair from New Jersey, a trigger-happy guard who seems all too eager for a chance to unleash his inner monster, an astronomer at an observatory on the island with a unique perspective on things, and more. Lillyanne Collins and her husband Pete quickly seize the opportunity presented by the apocalypse to become the presumptive rulers of the island, using a potent combination of charm, religion, gaslighting, social pressure, and strongarm tactics to smash down dissent among the less-affluent resort guests and preserve the power and luxury of the wealthy. Never mind that, without a sun, the rich are ultimately as doomed as the poor; so long as the poor die first and die miserably, the rich will go to their heavenly rewards happy. It's almost a reflex action, a last nerve twitch of a dying body, for them to take one last grab at preserving social inequality, one last kick to stomp down the masses. Dan inadvertently becomes the face of the resistance, despite his protest that he's no radical. Indeed, the first chance he has at shedding the role and possibly buying Mara safety, he reaches for it... but, still, something within him recoils at accepting this too-familiar status quo. Maybe Mara is right and there really is a better way... but how is he going to find it, let alone convince the people around him of it - and will they even have time with the temperature dropping and survival odds dimming?
There are plenty of places where Wassmer could've slipped in this story, but he manages to give the tale and the characters just a little more depth than one might expect, offering a little more insight and some genuine surprises along the way. The ultimate resolution had me waver on the rating a bit, but it plays into the ultimately satirical nature of the overall story; the human reactions might be all too plausible, but the setup was always supposed to be straight out of a B-grade thriller, and the ultimate explanation leans into that. All in all, considering that I had minimal expectations going into it (this was another impulse borrow via Libby, chosen primarily because its runtime would take me through most of a work day), I found myself pleasantly surprised.

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