Posts Tagged ‘zombie book’

Book Review – Surviving the Evacuation by Frank Tayell

Posted: September 2, 2014 in Book reviews
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Surviving the Evacuation bookI came across this whilst looking for a new zombie book to read, after having a bit of a break and reading some sci-fi. It was on my Kindle Owners Library list to borrow for free. Yeah, I know that isn’t always a good recommendation…I had a quick look at the blurb and thought I’d give it a try – mainly because it said it was set in the UK. I’ve read all three books in the series now:

  • Surviving the Evacuation: London
  • Survivng the Evacuation: Wasteland
  • Surviving the Evacuation: Family

OK, I’ve read all 3 books so it can’t have been too bad? Yeah, actually that’s about right.

The first book starts quite slow really and is based on the diary of Bill. As the outbreak, which started in New York, escalates and Britain is quarranined, Bill breaks his leg and is confined to his home. At first he has regular contact with the outside world via his friend Jennifer who is an MP. Then the evacuation starts and he is alone. Then the power  goes out and the streets start to fill with zombies. He realises that he must leave as soons as his cast can come off.

I hope I’m not spoiling too much by saying that he does leave his house, otherwise there wouldn’t really be books2 and 3….

It’s a series of books that is really easy to get along with as it’s based around a fairly small cast. Bill’s quite troubled (I won’t say why) but he’s quite a likeable character. Kim’s pretty ballsy and it’s not that unusual to have children in a zombie book, but these books include a baby too. Quite cool when you consider how much noise a baby makes!

This review is for all three books and I have to say the writing is strong throughout and I found myself wanting to know what was going to happen next. There’s a few twists in there but theywould be complete spoilers if I mention any of them. I did find one of the twists a little bit hard to swallow, but went with it and the extra character fitted well.

I quite like the way it is lead by the journal, which means it’smainly seen from one person’s point of view. I liked the way the story unfolded and they way it dealt with zombie encounters. It’s not a graphic “eat ’em up” book but much more about the situation and the people. It’s also very refreshing reading a UK-based zombie book 🙂

I would deffo recommend it. Such good value too!

Book review – Sawkill Stories by Matt Fitzgerald

Posted: September 12, 2013 in Book reviews
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Sawkill StoriesThis review includes Sawkill, The Silver Tower and Cora. The Silver Tower and Cora are both short, standalone books.

The main character, Jessie, is working away from home and he misses calls from his wife Mauri. Jessie is 300 miles away in New Jersey from his wife in Massachusetts.

It transpires that an infection has started in Manhattan and during the 9 hours that Jessie has had his phone turned off, events have escalated. The virus hasn’t been contained and the system has completely broken down. Jessie needs to get back to his wife and kids, and there are hordes of zombies in the way, not to mention the US government wanting to cleanse te infected areas by dropping bombs… not an easy trip then?

I found myself not really liking Jessie. He’s some sort of Jason Bourne type character who seems perfectly at ease in killing anyone that gets in his way. He’s supposed to be the good guy in the book but acts more like the bad guy. I guess the writer is trying to show that he’s a guy that stepped up when needed, but he comes across as a bit of a sociopath.

Anyway, I won’t give any spoilers, which I’m sorry kind of leaves a shorter review. It’s certainly a rollercoaster of action, some of which sometimes seems a little convenient, but it is a page turner. If you like a fast-paced action kind of book, this could be for you.

Now the Silver Tower is a twisted little story. It’s standalone but happens to be the same zombie apocalypse. Again delving too much into the story would give away too many spoilers. The Silver Tower is an exclusive high-rise condo where key staff pull down the shutter as the chaos outside starts to escalate. Let’s just say, it’s a short story to devour…

Cora is a more like a taster than a short story. It’s a about a man and his daughter. Again standalone but not too bad.

All in all, not a bad set of books. They are quite often on Amazon Prime, so well worth a read. Watch out for a few typos though. I also think there is a new book coming out.

Book review – the Sovereign Spirit Saga (Voyage of the Dead) by David Forsyth

Posted: June 5, 2013 in Book reviews
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Voyage of the DeadThis review cover all 3 books currently in the series:

  • Voyage of the Dead
  • Flotilla of the Dead
  • Deluge of the Dead

This is a series that I’ve had on my Kindle wish list fr ages and ages and just not got around to downloading. When the Zombie Book of the Month club chose a book I’d already read, I though this was a good opportunity to download this trilogy and give it a read.

It’s the usual sort of zombie book but with the twist of the main character being on a luxury boat when the outbreak happens. The main character, Scott, won the lottery a little while ago and bought this boat and had it kitted out in luxury and with a whole load of ‘boys toys’ so that he could sail around the world with family and close friends. The outbreak occurred just as they were heading back to the USA.

Flotilla of the DeadEverything happens pretty quickly in the book and the guys on the Sovereign of the Seas are pretty far removed from the horror happening around the world. They encounter zombies when they go to rescue friends and family trapped on the mainland.

The books read really well, and through the three books they encounter more survivors including miliary, FBI, police, mayors and the press. Scott always seems one step ahead of everyone else and makes full use of all his boys toys stashed n the boat. In some case I found him a bit too clever and well-equipped. He always seemed to have just the right piece of equipment stashed away in the hold, or just happens to have a marine laboratory to help the scientists come up with a cure for the virus. There’s not enough of the usual struggle that you have in a zombie novel.

However, I really enjoyed the ‘Interlude in Hell’ sections in he first book. Carl is struggling to survive after his wife becomes a zombie. He manages to find his way to a power station and starts to have some good ideas around survival and finds himself leading a band of survivors. This is much more like the usual story of survival when all the odds are stacked against you.

Deluge of the DeadLater in the books, Carl meets up with Scott and they join forces. There’s a build up to them both getting together, so you know that it will eventually happen. To be honest, I thought Carl had made a pretty good base at the power station and had picked up groups of survivors along the way. I wasn’t sure he needed Scott.

The books are good read. They move at quite a pace. Some of the storyline can be anticipated but there are a few twists and surprises, especially with some of the characters that do die along the way.

The way the third book ended, it looks like the will be a fourth book coming along at some point, which I will definitely read!

Book Review – Sadie Walker is Stranded by Madeleine Roux

Posted: April 27, 2013 in Book reviews
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Sadie Wlaker is StrandedI downloaded this onto my Kindle as soon as I’d finished Allison Hewitt is trapped. I really enjoyed that book and wanted to read more by the author. Here’s my review – Allison Hewitt is Trapped.

I’ll tell you what, this book didn’t disappoint.

It’s the same zombie apocalypse but with different characters. Sadie isn’t Allison, but she does aspire to Allison’s story. Due to the blog Allison wrote in the fist book, she’s a bit of an underground celebrity. She doesn’t appear in this book though. This is Sadie’s story and about the people around her and the people she meets on her own story.

Sadie’s is in Seattle and it’s several months after the zombie outbreak. Seattle is vaguely functioning and is slowly starting to rebuild itself. Then an infected gets in and all hell breaks loose. Sadie’s and her nephew and friend escape on her friend’s uncle’s boat during the chaos. There’s a mixed bag of characters on the boat. I don’t think I’m giving anything anyway when I say that something (involving zombies of course) happens and they end up getting stranded on an island. I guess the clue is in the title… 🙂

This story ends up also being a bit of a whodunnit mystery as well as a zombie novel. There’s not as much zombie action as most zombie books but the series of events that happens on the island and then trying to unravel what’s happening makes for a very good read.

This is almost a standalone book too and not exactly a sequel to the first book. There is the occasional nod to the first book.

I really enjoyed it. I liked the new characters. All with their own backgrounds and secrets. I liked the way the story unravelled in the whodunnit style too.

I really hope there will be another book in the ‘series’!

Book review – Allison Hewitt is trapped by Madeleine Roux

Posted: April 20, 2013 in Book reviews
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Allison Hewitt is TrappedThis is a cracking book!

It cropped up in my suggested read on Amazon and the title of the book really pulled me in to have a read of the blurb and the reviews. I do love a quirky title!

I normally try and seek out the unpublished authors and quite like a bargain on price. Well this wasn’t on offer or anything but something about it just made me want to grab it. As I said on the opening sentence, it’s a cracking book.

The zombie apocalypse happens and completely ordinary Allison ends up trapped in the bookstore where she works part-time. She’s trapped in the employee break room with her boss, some colleagues and some customers. They have security cameras so can see a little of what’s going on outside. They have some food, but all snacks and pop (soda to American readers).

What Allison does have though is power and an internet connection. To hep keep her sanity she starts to blog. The story is written in a series of blogs, which work really well as chapters. Each blog entry also contains comments from her followers which gives an insight into what is happening around the world and outside the confines of Allison’s break room.

Allison is a brilliant character and you find her starting to take control and being the one the decided to venture out for food. She gels with some of the other characters but some of them are still just colleagues.

If I write much more about the storyline then I’ll start to give spoilers and I really don’t want to do that. There does come a point though where they need to look at moving from the safety, and the confines, of the bookstore. Much of the book focusses on this. It develops really well, especially Allison’s character. Things don;t go smoothly and sometimes the good guys don’t make it…..

Allison, hopefully with her beloved axe, is just the perosn I’d want to be trapped with in a zombie apocalypse!

As soon as I finished it, I looked for other books by the author and found Sadie Walker is Stranded, which I downloaded immediately. I’ve already finished it so a review of that will follow shortly….

Book review – After: the Echo by Scott Nicholson

Posted: April 15, 2013 in Book reviews
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After the Shock: EchoThis book picks up exactly where the last book, After: the Shock finished. That’s always a good start in by view!

In the sequel we catch up with one of the characters from the last book and of course meet a few more.

I said this in my review of the first book, that these aren’t zombies as such, they are zapheads. At the end of the last book there are some observations that the zapheads are starting to change. Much of their initial violent behaviour seems to be leaving and they seem to be banding together and starting to work together. This continues in this book.

There are loads happening with Jorge and Franklin and some of the other characters get themselves into trouble. The zapheads are congregating together in groups and doing some quite od things

The book itself romps through. I couldn’t put it down once I’d started, but I do tend to find that with Scott Nicholson books. They are real action books. It flips between the different groups of characters and keeps you on the edge of wanting to know what happens next.

My only gripe is that the book is way too short. I read it in a day. It felt more like a novella. In fact, it finished at 86% on my Kindle and the rest was other books by the author. I would sooner have waited a little longer for a sequel and had something a bit more meaty! If you regularly read my reviews, then you’ll know this is a pet hate of mine…

Anyway, the story clearly hasn’t finished and you are left with a cliffhanger, so I guess there will be another book out soon.

Book review – Dead Stop by Nathan Hilliard

Posted: March 31, 2013 in Book reviews
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Dead StopThis book was shortlisted for the Zombie book for April, but Tankbread got there instead. Well, I’ve already read Tankbread, and enjoyed it, so I started to check out the other books. This one sounded OK and was on Amazon Prime, so I grabbed it.

It’s not exactly what I expected from the blurb on Amazon. I expected another standard zombie adventure, with the usual characters and lots of guns. What I got was something quite refreshing.

It started like a 1950s horror film. Set int the graveyard, with bodies rising form the grave. It really had the atmosphere of something like The Thing, or Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

Then you jump to the truck stop. Suddenly I felt like I was in a good old 80s film, with a mixed bunch of characters, including a load of just finished high types. I’ve got to admit I did a little internal groan as I wasn’t wondering whether this was going to be an 80s slasher movie… “don’t go into the bathroom on your own”.

I was wrong.

It’s a great book and keeps that interesting mix of feeling like a 50s story crossed with the 80s more graphic story. The monsters don’t stay hidden until the last scene, and there’s plenty of blood and gore!

Great mix of characters too. Lots of people stepping and doing their bit and of course a couple of idiots that you kind of hope might die quite early and quite horribly (I’m trying not to give away any spoilers here). Also as a UK lass, it’s quite refreshing for me to read a zombie book that isn’t packed to the high teeth with guns. These guys have to deal with some pretty fast and strong zombies without the usual US firepower.

Quite cool too that people do get injured and do struggle. In a lot of books the heroes get into all sorts of trouble, but never get any zombie-related injuries. These guys get hurt.

It’s a fab read and I found I couldn’t put it down. I liked the characters and they developed pretty quickly without the usual splurge of back story.

Pick it up and give it a read – it’s a real change from a lot of the books out there!

Book review – Dead America: a Zombie Novel by Luke Keioskie

Posted: March 25, 2013 in Book reviews
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Dead AmericaIn a sentence – Sam Spade meets zombies!

I got a good deal on the this – I got it on the Amazon Lending Library. It had some interesting reviews and was basically my free book for the month.

It reads like a Sam Spade old style crime story, with a smattering of film noir. Crime novels aren’t really my cup of tea but this sort of worked. It’s also a more unusual storyline. The zombies aren’t brain eating, shuffling monsters. They are not much different to the living, except they are dead.

Faraday is a private investigator and an ex-cop. He’s also living. He’s called in to investigate a couple of cases and things start to intertwine and get complicated. He’s a wonderfully cynical character and a little down on his luck. His wife ran off with his best mate and partner and there’s clearly something else that happened and that’s why he left the force.

It’s not a typical zombie story. Like I said earlier, these zombies don’t really behave like your standard zombies. They exist alongside the living, but more like second class citizens. They even have a lower minimum wage as they aren’t deemed to need the same things as the living workers. They do all the jobs no=one else wants to and also they are undercutting the living in other jobs due to that lower minimum wage. SO, as you can expect there a real undercurrent of bad feeling between the living and the dead. That runs through the whole story.

If I went into anymore, then I’d start to give away some spoilers.

Suffice to say, it’s a quirky story and refreshing in that it doesn’t follow the usual standard zombie stereotypes. The characters are also and interesting bunch with bits of back story peppered throughout the pages. There’s are even zombie crime lords. You find yourself piecing everything together as you go along the finale.

It’s well worth the read. And it’s something a little different.

Book review – Ragnorak Rising: the Reckoning by D.A. Roberts

Posted: March 21, 2013 in News
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Ragnrak Rising: the ReckoningAll I can say is wow!

I read the first book a little while ago and my review is here – Ragnorak Rising: the Awakening

I read book one on a recommendation and actually enjoyed it. I’d found it  a bit stilted at the start and thought it had a bit of an obsession with describing guns and ammo, bt there was none of that in this book.

It starts right where the other book left off. Wylie is at the dock with his dog, Odin. He’s surrounded by zombies left over  from the explosion at the end of the last book. He needs to find his way back to the jail and to his family.

Of course his journey isn’t easy and like the first book he meets up with some interesting characters along the way. SOme good and some very bad…

His journey back to the jail is only part of the story though. There is another group in the city, the Freemen, and they don;t want to share. A large part of the book is around the fight with these guys. It’s a little more ‘Mad Max’ with these guys but it works really well. There’s also a few Rambo-syle moment with Wylie. He’s a really good character and grows even more in this book. His relationship with Spec-4 still really works, and stays on that professional/friend level.

I liked the addition of the new characters in this book. They do give this book a different edge to the last book as there are more military personnel in it. I like the fact that strong women characters are still built into the storyline as nothing out of the ordinary. I did find all the extra characters a little confusing though and did get some of them mixed up.  I wasn’t too sure about Wylie’s wife either as he stock position in the book seemed to be not being pleased as he was off on another mission but passively accepting it. Actually that worked well towards the end of the book when she stepped up – don;t worry I’m not going to give you any spoilers!

This time the book ended at a better point. Not the huge cliffhanger that the first one ended on, but still left me thinking there’s more legs in this series.

I think there’s a new one out in the summer – so keep your eyes posted!!

Book review – Hive by Griffin Hayes

Posted: March 12, 2013 in Book reviews
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Those of you that have read my other reviews will know that I tend to read on my Kindle and I hate it when the book finished when my Kindle is showing less that 98% complete…. so, sorry but this does have an effect on my reviews…

HiveI picked this up on an Amazon recommendation and with the added bonus that it was 49p. It also had some 5 star reviews, although one did worry me – here’s the quote

“BEST BOOK EVER – A MUST BUY
I couldn’t put it down!
THIS AUTHOR IS A LITERARY GENIUS!
HE DESERVES A NOBEL PRIZE! – OR TWO!!!”

Hey ho, I decided that with the other good reviews and the bonus price it was well worth a read. I wasn’t wrong. It’s not a long book but it’s an interesting read.

The story is set a long time after a zombie apocalypse and Azine is leading a bunch of mercenaries on mission to find some ‘prospectors’ that have gone missing. Azine’s bunch are basically a group of hired guns and the prospectors look for things from the old world prior to its disintergration after the zombies rose. The cool bit for me is that Azina is a female leader, but she is written very much like a man. It’s done very well.

The other characters are also well-written and bounce off one another really well. Like I said, it’s a short book, but it zips along at lightening speed. Zombies haven’t been seen for a long time, but as they are searching for the prospectors, they uncover a hive of zombies and things start to happen pretty quickly from that point.

When I finished it I was delighted to see that there is a Hive II which I downloaded straight away.

This is where I was a tad annoyed. The story develops well but the book ends at 79%. It is not only too short, but the author has added some chapters from another of his books in the remaining 31%. Now I understand cross-selling but it always makes me feel cheated when the book ends 2/3 through.

I have heard that the author is working on the 3rd part of the Hive series and will combine into one book, which will make a lot more sense and make it into a more meaty sized novel. I do wish there was some sort of warning at the start of a Kindle book to say – look, this book ends at 79% so do not think you are getting more.

All in all though a pretty good read and I’d like to get the 3rd book to see how it concludes.

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