Tag: Zombie

Ex-Heroes

Ex-Heroes

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 »

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Pandemic

Pandemic

Review by Travis Starnes An alien intelligence launches one last shot at the human race causing a new disease to take hold and bring humanity to the brink of extinction.  Pandemic is the third book, and apparently the last book, in the Infected series.  The series revolves around an alien intelligence attempts to destroy humanity, and humanity’s response. While this book is clearly a sequel and assumes previous knowledge of events earlier in the series it drops enough breadcrumbs to keep up with what is going on.  This is good because I had never read any parts of the infected series and had no idea what was going on.  While I was lost for a chapter getting my bearings the book moves at a rapid enough pace that it doesn’t take long to catch hold. And that pacing is probably the best thing about this book.  It moves very fast… Read more »

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What Remains

What Remains

Review by Travis Starnes Set just before and during the zombie apocalypse What Remains follows a young survivor as she escorts a doctor and two of her young friends from the safety of one camp to another, and through the horrors beyond their sheltered homes. I love a good zombie book and this promised to be just that.  While I am generally prefer older protagonists everything about the setting of this book was the standard fare that I generally love.  The problem is the book just isn’t very good. The overall plotting came off as very juvenile to me.  I don’t really know anything about Kay Holland, but if I found out she was a teenager I would not be shocked. Everything from the plotting to the dialogue to the kid who was training his whole life for the apocalypse would seem more at place in a badly written direct… Read more »

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Ex-Purgatory

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 »

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Tell Me When I’m Dead

Tell Me When I’m Dead

Review by Travis Starnes Tell Me When I’m Dead is a fairly straightforward zombie tale of a small down overrun by the undead.  I am both the perfect audience for this book and a somewhat biased reviewer because I read lot of zombie fiction and love the genre.  This book does several things right with the genre and a bunch of things wrong. I will start by saying the book is competently written.  The zombie outbreak and how it works is all well-reasoned and the books pacing is solid.  Following the main character David through the various hurdles he faces in living in this world and keeping his family together is totally liner and not hard to follow.  I liked the addition of the military contractor akin to Black Water and the local opposition to them.  The one problem with zombie fiction is it tends to become a one track… Read more »

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Parasite

Parasite

Review by Travis Starnes Parasite really took me off guard.  It is the story of a future where humans have purposely made themselves hosts to a genetically modified species of Tapeworm.  Everything seems great until the parasites start getting restless, then things get interesting. I was really unsure what to make of this book.  Even after reading the back of the book I wasn’t sure if it was a mystery, sci-fi or horror story.  Turns out it is a little of all three.  Something I didn’t know going in, but I think most readers should be warned about before reading it, is this is part one of a larger story.  The book ends on a solid cliff hanger, which honestly killed me.  By the end of the book I was totally invested in what was going on and when I flipped the page and found the afterward and a “to… Read more »

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World War Z

World War Z

Review by Travis Starnes This book is nothing short of brilliant. That being said it may not be for everyone.  It is important to note that this is not a straightforward narrative following a survivor through zombie wasteland.  Instead World War Z is told in the form of an oral history set in a world where a worldwide zombie catastrophe has happened.  Brooks has managed to do such a good job of creating a fictitious oral history that it in fact reads like many real oral histories I have read in the past. World War Z recounts the alternate history of a world where there zombies rise from the dead, how they took over the world, and the ways in which the survivors pushed the zombies back and reclaimed their countries.  Even though it is clearly a work of fiction it none the less comes off as very believable, thanks… Read more »

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