The Cure - Glen Cooper
I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for classic post-apocalyptic fiction. You know, like The Stand, The Dog Stars, or Lucifer’s Hammer; and some older goodies like the The Andromeda Strain and Alas, Babylon. Glen Cooper’s The Cure is right up my alley, then, except perhaps the “classic” part.
It’s postapocalyptic fiction of the “global pandemic” subgenre (like The Stand), and I’ll grant that the premise of The Cure is inventive. Unlike the standard flu global pandemic, victims don’t die. Instead, they develop complete amnesia: no speech, no memory, no comprehension; just pure creatures of instinct (albeit trainable). The cause is an unholy marriage of a manufactured virus (intended to help cure dementia) and a wild virus that should never have come into contact with it. All because of a cascade of… well, stupidity.
As luck would have it, the two scientists who helped manufacture that virus are both among the one in five who seem immune. Problem 1: the hero (Jamie) is in Boston and the heroine (Mandy) is in Indianapolis. Problem 2: the hero’s teenage daughter (Emma) is, to put it nicely, tabula rasa. Problem 3: civilization has collapsed, and we all know what that means… the meek sure as heck will not inherit the earth.
What follows is stock postapocalyptic fiction; with the stereotypical brutal, violent fiefdoms and a harrowing journey across the country. That Jamie runs afoul of not one but two colonies of violent religious nutters may say something about the author, or perhaps something about the state of this country. Cooper has an MD, which suggests that the science he uses to describe his weirdo virus is plausible; albeit at a level that will give some readers headaches. If that’s you, just go with the flow and willingly suspend your disbelief. It’s only a couple of chapters.
What gave me a few headaches of my own wasn’t the medical science, though. No, that was the episodic nature of the action. It’s as if the book was written for serial television, neatly chopped into bite-sized chunks instead of forming an end-to-end narrative.
In that, The Cure shares structure with many recent thrillers I’ve encountered, making this reader (at least) suspect that the author was torn between writing a scripted series or a novel. Each episode – or story arc, if more than a couple of chapters – ends with a thrilling escape or the death of yet another semi-major character; all compressed into what seems to be an improbably short period. Truth be told, though, it was hard to get a handle on the duration covered by the action.
Cooper deserves kudos for an inventive premise. On that count alone I’d be inclined to award five stars. However, his inventiveness failed when it came to the “balance of good and evil,” as so well depicted in The Stand. Add to that a milquetoast main character and the lack of consistent timing, and I have to knock off some stars, leaving The Cure with three and a half.
copyright © 2026 scmrak
Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in return for my honest review.
