Bloom by Martin Kee

Bloom by Martin Kee is an unusual book. It is a book about two parallel universes that eventually become one. 

"Tennyson Middlebrook never considered himself a storyteller. The fairy tales he invented for his childhood friend Allison were only meant as a distraction from their troubled lives. For Tennyson, the stories were a whim, meant only to offer comfort in a bleak time of mass extinction and despair. The characters in his stories never even had names... But Lil'it is real, if not quite human. She is feh, a non-person, existing in a fractured world of hoarded knowledge where the simple act of writing is a crime punishable by death. At best she is property; at worst she is an exotic commodity, something to be sold off to rich, superstitious lords and bankers who would use her organs as aphrodisiacs. She lives in a cage, kept as a pet, her saliva a pathogen used to concoct potions. But when she is sold to the prince of a kingdom as a plaything, she discovers her world is much bigger, more dangerous, and far more terrifying than she had ever imagined from inside the safety of her prison. Tennyson's world has been afflicted by bloom, a parasitic fungus striking down the very people who might be able to stop it. For a disease that feeds on information, the minds and memories of humanity are the perfect food. As bloom scatters the remains of his species, Tennyson becomes separated from Allison. When he learns that she may still be alive, he must decide how far he is willing to go to see the end of the world with the only woman he ever loved... even if she has no memory of him." http://www.extaordinaryreads.com.

The two stories as standalone stories are incredible. The author is very descriptive and has an incredible imagination in terms of creatures that were added into the book.

Martin Kee switches between characters in the story each chapter. He does a good job of indicating who the main characters are in each chapter. Without this information, the book would have been difficult to follow.

However, I felt the book lost itself when the two stories were trying to be merged together into one. There was so much going on in each story that I think each one could have been a book by itself. I feel like the author had two good ideas  for books and could not figure out which one to follow.

I was a little disheartened by the ending of the story. I felt the book just ended without following through on all of the thoughts. I may just be hung up on the fact that I did not like how the two stories came together. It was more like fantasy meets sci-fi, which is hard to do. 

I felt this book had much more potential that what was actually achieved of it. I am happy I read it but it will not be a book I recommend to my friend or that I read again.