A review by fredicia
BZRK: Apocalypse by Michael Grant

5.0

"I'm not a serial killer, I'm just a writer."

The amount of research gone into this is mind blowing. And Mr.Grant has a very... vivid imagination.

No, but really, the way death happens in this book is practically an art form.

Keats or Plath was destined to die, it was the only realistic scenario. To be honest, I expected both to go mad, because the worst scenario is the most likely in this series. "Death or Madness" was stressed multiple times throughout. After the last book, when Plath started to investigate Lear, I predicted that Lear was going to be a villain as well, because the dude's moral principles are skewed, especially with Caligula enforcing his decisions.

I did not expect Lear to not be dude.

That surprised the fuck out of me. Even when she was introduced, up until the point when she was offering Bug that choice, I still thought she was some new character. Or a higher up in BZRK. Not the mastermind.

But then...

"And Lear smiled."

I also did not expect Vincent to be wired. Or for Jin to do the wiring. Because I figured Vincent would know if he's thinking wrong, and because Jin is the heart and not that adept at wiring people.

I feel like this book is a perfect metaphor for war. Both sides are wrong in different ways, both are considered lunatics. No one wins in the end, and the ones that suffer the most are the soldiers on the front lines. Both sides are hypocrites, even Keats and Plath. Didn't they kill a bunch of people in the Tulip, even as they were trying to prevent the destruction of the building?

I think this quote sums it up nicely:

"Funny, funny to think that in the end it would not be a race between destruction and salvation for humanity, but a race between two different lunatics, Benjamin and Lear, both bend on annihilation."