Plague Jeremiah Donaldson softcover, 216 pages ISBN 9781411670046
	As if inspired by some bizarre premonition, Plague details the fall of civilization after a freak strand of the Ebola virus finds its way onto a crowded plane, infecting all the passengers and systematically spreading across the globe.  Written over a year before a contagious TB patient traveled the globe for his wedding and threw the U.S. into a media storm, author Jeremiah Donaldson demonstrated with a chilling clarity just how vulnerable we are to such a disaster.  Unlike most such "end of the world" tales, however, there is no hero that rises from the ashes to provide hope for humanity's existence.  No everyman who stands up to the extraordinary challenges of the situation to rally the human spirit.  Instead, we get Moss Valley, a cynical, lazy clerk at the Money Cow check cashing establishment who decides to put down on paper what happened just before and after the outbreak hit.  There is nothing essentially endearing about Valley.  He smokes weed, has a general disdain for his fellow humans, and a disinterest in world affairs until the plague throws his world into chaos.  And yet as a narrator for the end of the world, he provides a bleak but realistic point of view.  Valley has his vaguely heroic moments in the novel, but they feel more like the actions of a man put upon to pick up the slack for someone else than the actions of a man answering a call to action.    Through Valley's eyes, we see a raw view of humanity's ugly side.  As Valley details the religious fanatics, conspiracy theorists, and mobs that begin taking over as the government spirals out of control, we're left to think "Yep, this really is how it would go down." Plague is a scary novel, not because the virus turns everyone into brain-eating zombies or cannibalistic mutants or any one of the popular gimmicks used in these types of tales.  Instead, it is frightening due to the stark, honest, bluntness by which it details the fall of humanity.  There is no genetic mutation that afflicts the victims of the plague, only death.  There is no evil super force behind the disease, only chance exasperated by panic.  Plague is not a recreational read, but it is an intriguing and dark reflection of what we really are.