Ex-Heroes is an interesting mashup of two very different book sub-genre’s, super-hero action and the zombie apocalypse. What is even more surprising than the mashup even existing is that it actually works. It seems the difficulty level of this is pretty high, but Clines pulls it off. The story is set after the apocalypse has already happened, so naturally Cline has to spend a lot of time in flashback explaining what happened. Thankfully this doesn’t break up the pacing and works in the narrative fairly well. Most of the books I have read that relied on flashbacks for exposition it did hurt the pacing, so the fact that this book still flows well is a credit to the writer. I found the use of heroes particularly interesting in Ex-Heroes. First is the fact that, even with all their superpowers, they were unable to stop the apocalypse from happening. Superheroes in… Read more »
Author: Peter Clines
Ex-Purgatory
Ex-Purgatory starts you in the middle of a story already in progress with characters you should already know but who don’t seem to know themselves. If you have read the previous volumes in this series then this book has an interesting opening that should keep you riveted. If, like me, this is your entrance into the series then you will spend the first 30% of the book trying to figure out what the heck is going on. To be fair this clearly was not intended to be a place for new readers to pick up the series and the book makes no qualms about it. There are really two ways you can go with a series, the stand alone approach where each book resents for new readers and each installment works unto itself or the episodic approach where each title builds on what came before it. Clines clearly went for… Read more »