I could not bring myself to read Survivor Song when it came out mid-2020. A year later, I must say that it's weird to read virus fiction now. Some of it, the anti-vax rhetoric and the conspiracy theories and guys flying the Gadsden flag, rang so true, so familiar, that it was oddly comforting. Yeah, I thought, it do be that way sometimes.

(Long-term effects of the pandemic on my sense of humor yet to be determined, but the prognosis isn't encouraging.)

Meanwhile, some moments read as heartbreakingly optimistic. Did that just say that only 10,000 people will die before it's contained? I wish...

The story follows Natalie, an expectant mother infected with a new type of super-rabies, and her friend Ramola, a pediatrician, as they race to secure medical care for Natalie before she succumbs to the disease. Despite Ramola's insistence that the infected people are not zombies, they run through a series of zombie movie checkpoints and heart-pounding moments on their ill-fated journey.

There were moments when their quest did not feel as tense or as scary to me as I expected it would, which might be down to my reading tastes: running around and action sequences are not my favorite things to read. But the moments where Tremblay dwells a bit on the characters and the implications of what's happening to them are genuinely distressing.

And the conclusion is harrowing. I finished this book sympathetically exhausted and wondering, as I do in most horror scenarios, if I would have been able to persevere in the same situation or make the same decisions. Hopefully I never get to find out.