( #Zombies, #Feed, #RiseAgain )
Image Credit: Reddit
Sad that Walking Dead is over? I got something that can hold you over. Long time readers of this blog will know I love me my zombies. Over the year, I read at least four zombie books (that I can remember), so I thought I would do some quick reviews in case you had an itch to read prose about shambling corpses.
Day by Day Armageddon
(also: Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile
This novel and its sequel (Beyond Exile) were written by an active solider serving in Iraq (I know that the first one was basically written overseas). This gives a unique perspective to the zombie survival story – the main character knows how to survive, sees the issue coming and prepares. Another interesting element is that the book is written in a first-person journal format which has hand-written notes, typos, and drawings. While the character is prepared, the need for supplies and the growing numbers surrounding his house cause him to work out an escape plan.
Throughout both books the protagonist (who isn’t named) finds survivors (both civilian and military) and becomes the leader of the typical rag-tag group. The book does an excellent job depicting action and laying out strategy. One of the criticisms I have of Bourne is that he writes the main character with “Superman Syndrome” – he puts him in crazy situations and then pulls the save out of his ass every time (think Bruce Willis in Die Hard). The technique is fine once or twice, but over two books it spreads thin.
There is a third book planned for the series and it looks to be leading to some hardcore military operations which I am thinking is going to be a turn off for me. But I will stick with the series because I want to see how Bourne ends his story.
Rise Again
Rise Again follows the typical zombie format with a few subtle changes. The initial infection is airborne causing most people to lose their minds and run until they fall over dead (obviously some people don’t get infected). As a small town piles up with dead bodies, they start to reanimate. The main character, Dani, is a female war vet and also the sheriff of a small town dealing with the dead. The character is flawed and not immediately like-able.
This throws the pacing of the book off the first few chapters until the reader starts to get into Dani’s head and learns to sympathize with her. The driving point in this book is that the character is trying to survive the zombies and collapse of society while trying to find her sister. Unlike Bourne’s book, Dani’s action has personal consequences which adds to the tension.
While the book starts off slow, it has one of the better endings of zombie fiction I have read lately.
Feed
This zombie book is set 30 years into the future. The dead rise due to a combination of two vaccines and the population of the world has learned to live around the problem. The two main characters of the book were born after the initial outbreak and have never known a world without the zombie threat. They grow up to be fringe bloggers doing dangerous things to get more traffic to their news network (it is more complicated than that but I don’t want to give away too much back story).
Author Mira Grant seems to have a background in virology and thankfully spends time setting up the rules of her zombie universe. She treats the zombies less like rotting meat puppets and more like walking viruses. The zombies have a purpose: to continue to spread the virus and that plays out in a few different scenarios in the book.
The zombies are not the only major plot point in the book, they are sort of a perpetual threat in the background, but there is another mystery driving the plot of the book (which seems to be setting up sequels). While this split focus was a distraction in some ways, it also made the book an easier read. The characters are not as one dimensional as most zombie fiction because survival is not the only driving plot point.
I just finished the book last night and I liked it – I thought the ending was a bit of a clusterfuck considering Grant is setting up sequels and it is easy to pick out the big villians, but overall Feed was a well developed zombie book with excellent universe building. Because of that I am interested in the 2nd book (looks to be called “Blackout”).
