The Last Commercial Ever by George EllisMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Last Commercial Ever is a clever take on an “end of the world” scenario set in motion by a successful television commercial that is aired during the Super Bowl—a commercial, designed by ad gurus Kip and Kelly, that is both light-hearted and well-executed. Before it is set to actually air, however, it is hacked by domestic terrorists and embedded with a series of visual patterns and images that cause fatal seizures. In the blink of an eye, millions die as they engage in the time honored tradition of paying homage to those expensive 30 to 60 second halftime advertising spots that have, in the past, been a source of great entertainment. The aftermath is brutal, the retelling of which takes up the lion’s share of the book.
Author George Ellis is a gifted writer. In this genre of post apocalyptic lit, finding an author like Ellis who can string together a coherent story without a plethora of errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation and typos has become like finding unicorn tears. Additionally, the book itself is well structured, believable and contains enough action to maintain reader interest. In spite of these strengths, however, there were weaknesses profound enough to cost a few stars in the rating process.
First, Ellis is clearly a man who prefers breadth over depth. The number of intersecting and parallel plots is unwieldy—a flaw reinforced by the absolutely inordinate number of characters, none of whom is ever fully developed. Instead, they are formulaically introduced, engage in some activity that may or may not further the plot, and then are rotated out to allow for the next character/set of characters to appear and repeat the process. This constant revolving door was at times disorienting and made it difficult to develop empathy or sympathy for any of the lot. The moment one is swept up in the story unfolding, the perspective is changed. Although some of the story lines intersect, there are others that simply run along a parallel set of tracks. I found myself wishing that Ellis had stuck to just the story of Kip and Kelly instead of allowing for huge periods of time to elapse before returning to them.
My second issue here is again with the characters, but this time it’s for the obvious attempt by the author to appear “woke”. The story has a gay character, a character that is a POC, a widower, a badass beautiful girl and a nerdy guy with self-esteem issues. There are young characters, old characters, educated characters, ignorant characters, and the list goes on. In the end, it felt forced and as if Ellis was inventing scenarios to allow him to include a “United Nations” cast instead of allowing the characters to grow organically from a strong storyline.
Three stars for the unique approach.
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