Going Bovine
Libba Bray
 Cameron Smith is a high school slacker from Texas who is on “a slow but uncontrollable skid to nowhere” living a somewhat aimless life. His father is a college physics professor; his mother is a community college English teacher. Cameron’s apparent social exclusion is emphasized when the author introduces his sister, Jenna, who is described as perfect. One of the first scenes in the novel is of Cam having what he thinks is a marijuana-induced hallucination of flames during his English class. This public hallucination gets Cameron sent to multiple drug counselors, all while his hallucinations continue. Cameron’s life starts to spiral out of control when he is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant BSE (also known as mad cow disease), probably contracted from his minimum-wage job at the fast food joint Buddha Burger. While Cam is hospitalized, the character Dulcie is introduced as a hallucination-induced vision. She is described to have been sent to give Cam a mission to save the world from the character unknown to Cam as Wizard of Reckoning. Dulcie has pink hair, wears boots, and spray paints her wings; she tells him that he can possibly save his life, but only by first finding Dr. X, a time traveling physicist. Cameron starts thinking about his journey and how he can succeed and get the most out of it. Unconvinced at first by Dulcie’s suggestion, Cameron changes his mind when he is attacked by fire giants and a mysterious Wizard of Reckoning—a masked figure wearing a silver space suit who is intent on killing him. He is given a Disney World wristband by Dulcie that is explained to be able to keep the disease from advancing any further into Cam’s brain. In the journey that follows, the “hallucenogenic mix of elements in the adventure” are all revealed to “have roots in his ‘real’ life” . Cameron sneaks out of the hospital with his roommate and high school classmate, Gonzo, a video game playing dwarf with an overprotective mother on a quest that takes them from Texas to New Orleans and into Florida, all the while pursued by the Wizard of Reckoning and his fire giants. Throughout the next section of the story, “guided by random signs” , Cam and Gonzo take a bus to New Orleans, where Mardi Gras is happening. While they stay in New Orleans, Cam goes to a party with two strangers who are explained to be natives of the city. At this party, Cam meets a garden gnome who is explained to actually be a Norse god named Balder, who was trapped in garden gnome form before the plot of the novel started by the god Loki, the Norse trickster who is not mentioned or explained about any more in the novel. Balder joins the two boys in their road trip. After catching another bus from New Orleans heading towards Disney World, where Dulcie explained that Dr. X could be found, the three characters are stranded in between towns when the bus leaves them behind. After the diner they stop at is attacked by fire giants revealed to be working with the Wizard, they purchase a car and drive the rest of the way to Florida, not risking public transportation because after the diner blew up, they were listed as nationally wanted terrorists. On the way, they pick up three high school senior hitchhikers on their way to the YA! Party House, explained to be the headquarters of a very popular TV show of the same name. Once they get to the Party House, it is explained that the three boys stole Balder in order to sell him on one of the station’s game shows. Cameron and Gonzo, after being on shows of their own which they win using obscure knowledge gleaned from Cam’s “real” life, sneak into the dressing room of the shows host to steal Balder back. Once the three protagonists are reunited, they continue on to the beach for an afternoon on Balder’s urging, humoring his explanation that his Norse ship is waiting for his once he gets to the shore to take him back to Valhalla. While they are at the beach, men explained to be operatives from United Globes Wholesales, a snow globe company, attack them, trapping Dulcie in a snow globe and killing Balder, who was thought up until this point to be invincible. To get Dulcie back, Cam and Gonzo follow the company’s truck to Disney World. Once there, they walk from gift shop to gift shop, looking for where Dulcie’s snow globe could have been dropped off. Eventually, Cam and Gonzo are separated when Cam follows one of the employees into a ride in Tomorrowland. The small door he goes through is revealed to lead to Dr. X’s lab, where the newly revealed character tells Cam that the “snow globe gun” the employees of UGW used on Dulcie is his secret of life, and his “cure” to Cam’s illness.. Cam refuses that fate, and then the Wizard appears, reminding Cameron and the reader that Cam’s “clock is ticking” . The wizard is described as looking exactly like Cameron, and chases him through various doors in a long hallway, where Cam runs through scenes exactly like his life when he was younger. After the Wizard catches up to Cam, the protagonist defeats him by blowing on a trumpet given to him by a jazz musician in New Orleans. Cam then wakes up in the hospital, to the scene of a nurse turning off his various life support machines and his parents and sister crying in the background, revealing that the whole plot was a hallucination induced by the mad cow disease eating away at his brain.