Libba Bray's book, Going Bovine, is based on a some what troubled kid named Cameron Smith. Cameron encounters a bunch of predicaments in his average social misfit life. He's the kid that is scraping by to pass his classes, not interested in college, and suffers from family expectations constantly. His parent's are both professors. I guess the whole C+ student and underachieving thing makes sense now huh? Anyway, even though Cameron is suffering through these expectations that are placed down on him; he is also suffering from a mad cow disease for humans and lack of communication with his father.
Cameron starts off in the book with a really bland and boring life. To be honest with you, he was a loser with an extremely popular sister. Cameron was diagnosed with a mad cow disease in a form that was for human beings. It's called Creutzfelt-Jakob, which is a neurological disease that affects your brain. These prions, which are infectious proteins, are making bad copies and destroying Cameron's brain overtime. He was told that there would be no cure for him and that he would die. Through the perspective of Cameron's eyes, you see a dramatic change in the mood. Before he even found out about this disease, Cameron was very humble and lived an average life. Throughout the book, Cameron sees a punk angel and starts thinking he's crazy, but it turns out that she was just a messenger for Dr.X. Dr. X, who has not be revealed who he exactly is, has the power and capability to help Cameron and keep him alive. He has the cure. I thought this was an extremely great hook to force Cameron on this mission.
Like I said before, Cameron fears death. Just like him, I fear death more than anything in the world. Just kidding. I fear the dark, but honestly I do fear death. The fact that Cameron has this fantasized disease makes me wonder about those who have suffered from actual real life threatening conditions like cancer. The thought of death scares me. It makes me wonder how I would die later on in my life, but it also makes me wonder why we die. Why must we die? This thought is constantly something that I wonder. We all die in a point in our lives and that's just how life is. Or that is how we told life is. Why do we die? I can only imagine how it is even more frightening for children to think or hear about death.
Frankly, I have plenty more pages to read from this book, which is wonderful because it keeps me on my feet. I'm afraid that I read too fast I will surpass the important random details to finishing Cameron's mission. Something that questions me now is whether or not Cameron will actually stay alive after this whole journey. Was Dulcie, the punk angel, just lying to him to get him to accomplish and finish this mission? This dark energy that possesses him seems so powerful and unrealistic, but realistic at the same time.
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