zombies Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / April 21, 2018

Review: Zombie Abbey

Zombie Abbey by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

And the three teenage Clarke sisters thought what they’d wear to dinner was their biggest problem…

Lady Kate, the entitled eldest.
Lady Grace, lost in the middle and wishing she were braver.
Lady Lizzy, so endlessly sunny, it’s easy to underestimate her.

Then there’s Will Harvey, the proud, to-die-for—and possibly die with!—stable boy; Daniel Murray, the resourceful second footman with a secret; Raymond Allen, the unfortunate-looking young duke; and Fanny Rogers, the unsinkable kitchen maid.

Upstairs! Downstairs! Toss in some farmers and villagers!

None of them ever expected to work together for any reason.

But none of them had ever seen anything like this.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Netgalley. ]

A story with Austen undertones… and zombies. (I’ve seen it compared to ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’, but not having read that one, I honestly can’t tell.)
At Porthampton Abbey, a couple of years after World War I, the Clarke family has to contend with the problem of the entail, just like in ‘Pride and Prejudice’—meaning that if one of the daughters (preferably the elder, Kate) doesn’t marry very soon and has a male heir, their family will lose their estate after the death of Earl Clarke. Which is why the latter has invited a couple of potential suitors to stay for the weekend, including an older businessman from London, a duke, and a recently discovered cousin who’s very likely to inherit anyway, considering he’s the only male heir (but here’s to hope he’ll marry Kate, and all will be well in the world). And the story would go its posh, merry way, if not for the strange death of a villager, found half-devoured… A villager whom his widow has to kill a second time with a bullet to the head.

The beginning of this story definitely has its appeal: the Clarkes display a comical mix of common sense (Kate when it comes to hunting, for instance) and quirky, whimsical inability to grasp that other people are not only their servants, they’re, well, human beings with their own lives, too. This was a conflict in itself in the book, with the ‘Upstairs’ people having to realise that they have to pay more attention to the ‘Downstairs’ people. The build-up to the part where zombies actually make an appearance was a little slow, but in itself, it didn’t bother me, because discovering the characters (and rolling my eyes while trying to guess who’d kick the bucket) was quite fun. Granted, some of the characters weren’t very likeable; the earl felt too silly, Kate too insensitive… but on the other hand, I liked where Lizzy and Grace started and how they progressed—Lizzy as the girl whom everyone thinks stupid, yet who turns out to be level-headed when things become dangerous, and Grace being likely the most humane person in her family. The suitors, too, looked rather bland at first, however a couple of them started developing more of a (pleasant) personality. And I quite liked Fanny as well, the quiet-at-first but assertive maid who refuses to let ‘propriety’ walk all over charity.

After a while, though, the style became a little repetitive. The way the various characters’ point of views were introduced at the beginning of each chapter or sub-chapter, for some reason, tended to grate on my nerves, I’m not exactly sure why; and while I don’t have issues with casts of more than 2-3 POV characters, here the focus regularly went back to some action already shown in a previous chapter, but this time from another character’s point of view, which felts redundant.

I also thought that while there -were- zombies, I’d have liked seeing a little more of them. There was tension, but I never felt the story was really scary (for me and for the characters both), and the moments when a character got hurt was usually due to their being too stupid to live and doing something that no one in their sane mind should’ve done anyway.

Finally, I’m not satisfied with the ending: I don’t know it there’ll be a sequel or not, but if it’s meant to be a standalone, then it leaves way too many things open.

Conclusion: 2.5 /3 stars. I’m curious about how the situation at Porthampton Abbey will unfold, and if there were a sequel, that’d be good, because it’d mean the characters could finish growing, too.

Yzabel / July 13, 2017

Review: Bright Smoke, Cold Fire

Bright Smoke, Cold Fire by Rosamund Hodge

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

When the mysterious fog of the Ruining crept over the world, the living died and the dead rose. Only the walled city of Viyara was left untouched.

The heirs of the city’s most powerful—and warring—families, Mahyanai Romeo and Juliet Catresou share a love deeper than duty, honor, even life itself. But the magic laid on Juliet at birth compels her to punish the enemies of her clan—and Romeo has just killed her cousin Tybalt. Which means he must die.

Paris Catresou has always wanted to serve his family by guarding Juliet. But when his ward tries to escape her fate, magic goes terribly wrong—killing her and leaving Paris bound to Romeo. If he wants to discover the truth of what happened, Paris must delve deep into the city, ally with his worst enemy . . . and perhaps turn against his own clan.

Mahyanai Runajo just wants to protect her city—but she’s the only one who believes it’s in peril. In her desperate hunt for information, she accidentally pulls Juliet from the mouth of death—and finds herself bound to the bitter, angry girl. Runajo quickly discovers Juliet might be the one person who can help her recover the secret to saving Viyara.

Both pairs will find friendship where they least expect it. Both will find that Viyara holds more secrets and dangers than anyone ever expected. And outside the walls, death is waiting…

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss.]

Hmm, not sure about this one. It’s a retelling of ‘Romeo & Juliet’, in a city that is the last one standing while the rest of the world has been invaded by ‘zombies’, where three families share the power, and where the religious order of the Sisters of Thorn has to perform yearly blood sacrifices in order to keep the undead at bay. It has a mysterious plague that makes people rise again after their death if precautions aren’t taken, and in that city, ‘the Juliet’ is actually a warrior bred from birth through magic rituals, with the ability to sense if someone has shed her family’s blood, and the compulsion to avenge said family member in turn (in other words, she still does a few other things than feigning death, thinking Romeo is dead, and promptly killing herself in turn). Also, she’s doomed to turn mad at some point

All in all, why not? This was interesting. The story itself, though, was kind of confusing, and although it did end up making sense, there were quite a few things I would’ve seen developed more in depth. Such as the Night Games, or the Necromancer (who kind of turned up at the awkward moment), or the Romeo/Paris/Vai trio relationship.

I’m not sure about the characters. I sort of liked the Juliet? Because she had that idea that ‘I’m already dead, and Romeo is dead, so I don’t care about dying because it means I can see him again’, yet at the same time she was quite lively and determined and not actively trying to take her own life while moping; her story is also rather sad (stripped of her name/real identity in a family whose beliefs in the afterlife involve having a name in order to be saved… nice). Romeo, though, was kind of stupid, and Paris way too naive; of the power trio there, the one I definitely liked was Vai (with a twist that was a bit predictable, but eh, he was fun to read about, and I totally agreed with the way he envisioned problems and how to tackle them!). As for Runajo… I don’t know. Determined, too, yet there were several moments when I thought her decisions should have her get killed or cast out or something, and she wasn’t because Plot Device.

(And very, very minor thing that probably only peeved me because I’m French, but… ‘Catresou’ sounds just so damn weird. I kept reading and ‘hearing’ that name as a French name, which sounds exactly like ‘quatre sous’—that’s like ‘four pence’—aaaand… Yep, so bizarre.)

Conclusion: 2.5 stars. To be fair, I liked the world depicted here in general, and that this retelling is sufficiently removed from R & J as to stand by itself; however, it was probably too ambitious for one volume, and ended up confusing.

Yzabel / February 29, 2016

Review: Hell’s Bounty

Hell’s Bounty by Joe R. Lansdale

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

If the Western town of Falling Rock isn’t dangerous enough due to drunks, fast guns and greedy miners, it gets a real dose of ugly when a soulless, dynamite-loving bounty hunter named Smith rides into town to bring back a bounty, dead or alive—preferably dead. In the process, Smith sets off an explosive chain of events that send him straight to the waiting room in Hell where he is offered a one-time chance to absolve himself.

Satan, a bartender also known as Snappy, wants Smith to hurry back to earth and put a very bad hombre out of commission. Someone Smith has already met in the town of Falling Rock. A fellow named Quill, who has, since Smith’s departure, sold his soul to the Old Ones, and has been possessed by a nasty, scaly, winged demon with a cigar habit and a bad attitude. Quill wants to bring about the destruction of the world, not to mention the known universe, and hand it all over: moon, stars, black spaces, cosmic dust, as well as all of humanity, to the nasty Lovecraftian deities that wait on the other side of the veil. It’s a bargain made in worse places than Hell.

Even Satan can’t stand for that kind of dark business. The demon that has possessed Quill, a former co-worker of Satan, has gone way too far, and there has to be a serious correction.

And though Smith isn’t so sure humanity is that big of a loss, the alternative of him cooking eternally while being skewered on a meat hook isn’t particularly appealing. Smith straps on a gift from Snappy, a holstered Colt pistol loaded with endless silver ammunition, and riding a near-magical horse named Shadow, carrying an amazing deck of cards that can summon up some of the greatest gunfighters and killers the west has ever known, he rides up from hell, and back into Falling Rock, a town that can be entered, but can’t be left.

It’s a opportunity not only for Smith to experience action and adventure and deal with the living dead and all manner of demonic curses and terrible prophecies, it’s a shot at love with a beautiful, one-eyed, redheaded-darling with a whip, a woman named Payday. But it’s an even bigger shot at redemption.

Saddle up, partner. It’s time to ride into an old fashioned pulp and horror adventure full of gnashing teeth, exploding dynamite, pistol fire, and a few late night kisses.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A crossover between western, horror and dark comedy, where a bounty hunter who blew himself up to Hell (literally) is recruited to prevent the end of the world. This mix is full of saloon pillars, hardened girls, flash-eating ghouls, not too clever zombies, and heroes (and foes) out of the Far West legends and dime novels. A bizarre and mismatched posse, and none is guaranteed to come out of this alive.

I found this novel fairly weird: entertaining to a degree, but sort of straddling a fence, as if it never knew what it really wanted to be. Horror? Comedy? It would lean alternatively towards one or the other, swinging back and forth between both genres, sometimes successfully, sometimes with results that were a bit silly. There’s a Lovecraftian-like threat, and a mesmerising long night with vivid imagery of a moon cleft in two by a tower… and there’s the villain that looked like a cross between a gargoyle and a bat. There’s Falling Rock, with its resident bully who hits prostitues and shoots down just about anyone out of his own feelings of misery… and there are all the stereotypes, perhaps too much like stereotypes, of, well, stereotypical western stories (drunk doc, undertaker, kid playing at being a big gun…). There are scenes both gruesome and funny—like the short-lived moment when Jenny comes out of her grave—and there are others where the humour doesn’t take too well. The ghouls are often dumb and presented more like comic relief… and then dismember and eat people like there’s not tomorrow.

The writing itself was disjointed and weird at times. I got an ARC, so I wouldn’t expect it to be flawless, yet often a sentence would jump out of the page, looking twisted and not fully grammatically correct. Though it wasn’t absolutely unreadable, it was distracting enough to pull me out of the story at times. The dialogues, too, were hit or miss: some lines made me smile and snort, befitting dark humour western characters, while others just made me roll my eyes. Some parts were action-packed and a funny ride, and others ended up feeling repetitive (attack zombies, get hurt/maimed/trampled/killed/devoured, not necessarily in that order, rinse and repeat).

I’d deem this the kind of quick read definitely worth it when you don’t need to focus and just want to spend a few hours with an entertaining story. Which in itself is not a bad thing, nor anything to be belittled. However, the writing and the wonky pacing don’t make it much more than “enjoyable then forgettable”. 2.5 stars.

Yzabel / November 25, 2015

Review: Deadlands: Ghostwalkers

Deadlands: Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

The first of three media tie-in novels based on the hit RPG franchise Deadlands

From New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry, the first in a thrilling series of novels based on Deadlands, a hugely successful role-playing game (RPG) set in the Weird, Weird West.

Welcome to the Deadlands, where steely-eyed gunfighters rub shoulders with mad scientists and dark, unnatural forces. Where the Great Quake of 1868 has shattered California into a labyrinth of sea-flooded caverns . . . and a mysterious substance called “ghost rock” fuels exotic steampunk inventions as well as plenty of bloodshed and flying bullets.

In Ghostwalkers, a gun-for-hire, literally haunted by his bloody past, comes to the struggling town of Paradise Falls, where he becomes embroiled in a deadly conflict between the besieged community and a diabolically brilliant alchemist who is building terrible new weapons of mass destruction . . . and an army of the living dead!

Review:

[I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I used to play the Deadlands RPG when I was in high school. That was, well, long ago. Long enough for the game to be in its original iteration, no LCG or anything. Back when we used poker chips that could act as jokers, but we greedily kept them because the unused ones would turn into experience points at the end of the game. Yeah, that was quite a few years ago.

So I wanted to try and see what a novel set in the Deadlands universe was like.

Though I admit my recollections of the game are far and few between, I’m not sure the book exactly related. Some elements fitted, and had the “Weird West” feeling I tend to associate with that world, but they seemed to be thrown in more as add-ons than as true parts. (Dinosaurs, zombies, steampunk weapons, etc.) It was fun, sure, yet it also looked as too much being crammed in it… and at the same time, the novel felt too long for the story it had to tell.

It worked well enough as a “strange western”-like story in the beginning, in that the action started fast, and the tropes I was looking for were there: gunslingers, little town under the tyranny of a couple of rich white guys with their own militia of sorts, inhabitants trying to resist but being outnumbered… However, after a while, I began to lose interest, likely because of the repetitiveness of said action, and because the characters didn’t have much depths, all things considered. Grey had a troubled past… but there isn’t much more to him once this past is uncovered (he did work as a character thrown in that mess without much knowledge of what happened, as other people explaining things allowed the reader to discover them as well). Jenny was the mandatory brave female character with a shotgun, and her courage was commendable, yet out of this and her relationship with Grey, there wasn’t too much to her either. The monk was forgettable, and the villain was… gloating?

A definitely problematic character was Looks Away, the Sioux guy who happened to be part of a circus in Europe, got an education there, and now throwns in “British” slang all the time. Making him a Sioux felt more like ye olde mandatory POC than like a real person, as basically he could have been a British scholar just as well, and it wouldn’t have changed the plot in any way. (Granted, had the author gone overboard the other way, by making him a Native American cliché, it’d have been just as bad. But I believe in middle grounds.)

A good deal of the novel was also both boring and too over the top to fully belong. Characters discover awful weapon and enemies, fight them, manage to escape at the last moment, bit of deus ex machina here, rinse and repeat. (A corset stopping a bullet… Uh… Not sure about that, and if the explanation is what I think it was, it wasn’t made very clear in the end.) As for the enemies, I could do with zombies (in the Deadlandsverse? Sure!), but the vampire-witches mqde me wonder what they were doing here, and dinosaurs was too far-fetched, seemingly added to the mix just because at some point, someone must’ve said “hey, why not put dinosaurs in there, too, they’re cool.” Odd.

Writing style: long descriptions (of which I quickly get bored), and a tendency to veer into very short sentences/3-word long paragraphs that worked sometimes, and were jarring at others.

Conclusion: Some interesting ideas, but the characters need to be fleshed out, and the novel to be trimmed down when it comes to descriptions.

Yzabel / May 18, 2015

Review: Modern Rituals

Modern Rituals by J.S. Leonard

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

“A failed ritual annihilates modern life.”

Manhattan, NY: The E-Train slams into James Bixby, a strapping young artist on the rise, after a life-saving rescue attempt goes awry. Belfast, Ireland: A bullet severs Olivia Young’s spinal cord while she defends a doctor colleague–the second bullet pierces her heart.

Then they awaken–unharmed.

“Selected” and thrust into a deadly ritual, James’ and Olivia’s lives–along with the lives of five others–will decide humanity’s fate: surrender to the old Gods’ rule or live on in blissful ignorance. Follow their frantic struggle as Magnus–a secret organization of enormous reach and scientific prowess–directs the ritual to its gruesome end.

Dubbed as a Cabin in the Woods “remix,” Modern Rituals celebrates the movie’s ritual motif and compels readers with a rich universe propped upon science fiction and mythology. If you loved the fierce pace of Battle Royale and the fight to survive in Hunger Games, then Modern Rituals: The Wayward Three will quicken your heartbeat and leave your eyes red and bleary! Pick it up and strap in–once this story leaps off the page there’s no turning back.

Review:

I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This book is so difficult to rate: because I enjoyed the story, I really did (I have a fondness for tropes when they’re openly exploited as such). However, it’s also so terribly close to The Cabin in the Woods in its concept and execution, and without any acknowledgment of the movie (or, even further, of the other book that the movie supposedly plagiarised) that everything is a muddled cluster here. I’m not talking “it’s about a boy who goes to a school of wizardry, so it’s like Harry Potter” inspiration. I’m talking something even more blatant than this.

I liked the use of technology, computers and science to fulfill the needs of elder gods, assuage them and put them back to sleep. I liked how the people behind the rituals had to resort to archetypes/tropes: the Knight, the Succubus, the Virgin, the Fool, and so on. It cast the characters into specific moulds, forced them to play roles they wouldn’t have played otherwise. Besides, the blend of magic and technology is something that’s always fascinated me—perhaps because both seem to be the antithesis of each other, yet, in the words of A. C. Clarke, isn’t any sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic?

On the other hand, the tropes didn’t go far enough to my liking, in that in the end, mostly the characters did stay in those roles, and didn’t subvert them, when it would have been the perfect opportunity to do so.

I liked the twists, how the characters who were supposed to die got given a second chance, how the one who wasn’t supposed to join them actually did more than one would have thought, how the one who was supposed to die didn’t. However, there were a few but glaring holes in that, including how exactly the seven were transported into the school grounds, and the survival of… let’s say characters that shouldn’t have been able to fake their injuries or death. I mean, Olivia’s a nurse: nothing should escape her in that regard. If she pronounces someone dead, then that person is definitely dead, or at least so close to it that no recovery should be possible in such a short time.

I also wondered about the parts the characters were supposed to play, not only within the ritual itself, but in a meta way. I thought Olivia would be on par with James, as the female main protagonist, yet she was quickly overshadowed. A shame.

And… I still can’t overlook the similarities I pointed to at the beginning of my review. There are too many of them. I don’t know if I’ve missed something; I looked in the first and last pages of the novel to see if this was addressed at some point, and it just wasn’t (although one of the character clearly mentions the rituals having different settings throughout the world, “even a cabin in the woods”). I honestly don’t know what came first. Basically, I’m not even sure I should touch that with a ten-foot pole. You just… don’t do that. Is all.

Yzabel / January 25, 2015

Review: Zombies – More Recent Dead

Zombies: More Recent Dead by Paula Guran

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the twenty-first century: they are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves – and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival – as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction. We’ve again dug up the best stories published in the last few years and compiled them into an anthology to feed your insatiable hunger…

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Anthologies are always difficult for me to rate—so many different stories, so many authors, and you know you’re bound to find very good pieces, and some you don’t like at all. As far as collections go, this one about zombies was a fairly good one, all in all, that I would rate a 3.5 to 4 stars.

(Also, the time I spend reading a book is usually a good indicator of my interest in it, but in this case, it doesn’t apply. I was reading a couple of other zombie-themed books in the meantime, and I preferred to go slow, rather than eat too much of the same thing at once. pun totally intended, of course.)

My favourites:
– “Iphigenia in Aulis”: the story that spun “The Girl With All The Gifts”, so no surprise here. Reading this “first draft” was interesting, even though I liked the novel better (since it was more developed).
– “The Naturalist”: nasty and vicious undertones here.
– “What Maisie Knew”: a dark and twisted take on what use zombies can be. Somehow it also made me think of “Lolita”, probably because of the way the narrator views himself?
– “The Day the Music Died”: a manager trying to cover up that his money-making rock-star is actually dead. This one had a twisted, funny side that spoke to me. Don’t ask me why.
– “The Death and Life of Bob”: how zombies are not necessarily what you expect… and how dark and narrow-minded humans can be, too.
– “Jack and Jill”: parallels between the zombies and a child who’s sick with cancer and already a “living dead”, in that he knows he probably won’t stay in remission for long. (The fact that *I* actually enjoyed a story with cancer in it is mind-boggling, and speaks of how it managed to make me forget my own fears in that regard.)
– “The Gravedigger of Konstan Spring”: a remote little town where people don’t seem to stay dead for long. Disturbing, strange, quirky, and full of moments when I wondered to which extent the inhabitants would go to keep their gravedigger.
– “Chew”: disturbing not for its take on zombies, but for what actual human beings can do to other human beings.
– “What We Once Feared”: another story bent on revealing how bleak human nature can be, and how dire situations can reveal the worst in people.
– “Aftermath”: the title says it all. How people manage and how life gets back on track slowly after the cure to the zombie-virus has been found. Disturbing aspects about what killing those “zombies” actually meant.
– “Love, Resurrected”: a dark fantasy tale of sorcery, necromancy, and of a woman who has to keep battling even after the flesh has left her bones.
– “Present”: sad and touching in a terrible way.
– “Bit Rot”: when a zombie story collides with science-fiction of the space-travelling kind. The reason behind the “bit rot” was a nice change for me.

OK stories:
– “The Afflicted”: I liked the idea behind it (the elderly ones only falling ill… alas, everybody’s doom to grow old), but it deflated a bit after a while.
– “Becca at the End of the World”: the last hour of a teenager. However, it was a little too short to be as powerful as it could be IMHO.
– “Delice”: not one I’ll remember for long, but nice to read
– “Trail of Dead”: good concept, but I’m not too sure of the apprentice’s part in that (it seemed unfocused).
– “Stemming the Tide”: a little weird, though also poetic in its own way.
– “Those Beneath the Bog”: the curse on a lake, and how old folk tales shouldn’t be discarded. Perhaps a wee bit too long, though.
– “What Still Abides”: very, very weird, in that it tries to emulate Old English grammar. I can’t make up my mind about it, but overall, it still felt strange in a sort of good way for me.
– “In The Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection”: beautiful and dreamy. Not exactly a zombie story, though.
– “‘Til Death Do Us Part”: not exactly original, still enjoyable. A wife comes back from the grave, and her family tries to keep her with them.
– “The Harrowers”: the narrator’s name kind of tiped me about the ending, however it remained interesting.
– “Resurgam”: a good idea that unfortunately ended up in two storylines not meshing up together well. I still liked the Victorian narrative, though.
– “A Shepherd of the Valley”: a bit predictable.
– “The Hunt: Before and The Aftermath”: I wasn’t sure at first where this one was going, but it had interesting insights into revenge in general.

The ones I didn’t like:
– “Dead Song”: I didn’t care for the actor-narrating-story approach. Another one might have worked better, because there was a good idea behind it.
– “Pollution”: I like Japanese culture, but the tropes were too heavy-handed here.
– “Kitty’s Zombie New Year”: forgettable, I didn’t really see the point to this story.
– “Selected Sources for the Babylonian Plague of the Dead”: the narrative style didn’t do it for me at all here. Which is really too bad, because the different setting made for quite interesting grounds.
– “Rocket Man”: I don’t know if it was meant to be comical or not. It didn’t leave much of an impression (but then, I’m not too interested in base-ball for starters, which doesn’t help).
– “I Waltzed with a Zombie”: I couldn’t push myself to get interested in it, I don’t know why. I neither adore nor terribly dislike Hollywood B-movie settings in general, so maybe it was the narrative that didn’t grab me.

Note: A couple of stories are actually in poetic form, which makes them harder to rate (yes, including Neil Gaiman’s one).

Yzabel / August 31, 2014

Review: Ash and the Army of Darkness

Ash and the Army of Darkness by Steve Niles

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

The battle has been fought and won. Ash battled and defeated the Deadite image of himself and saved the world. Now all he wants to do is get home and have a normal life. Too bad he messed up the Book of the Dead incantation. Will Ash ever escape the land of the Deadites? Will he ever find his girl? Will he ever remember the last part of the incantation? Now an army of unbelievable horrors rules the land and only Ash can annoy them!

Review:

(I received a copy of this book from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This volume collects issues 1 to 8 of the comics, which pick up right after where the Army of Darkness movie left off—at least, if memory serves right. Ash is pulled back in 1300 to face more Deadites and a renewed threat, this time because the one he left the Book of the Dead with might not have been the best choice. (Not that anyone would have been a best choice: it seems the book has a will of its own.)

I found the book somewhat close to what I remember of the movies—Ash being both badass and somewhat stupid at times (the Faceless Man part is quite a good example of that, and I can say I wanted to facepalm just as much as the other character involved). However, I regularly felt that more could have happened, and that the plot didn’t move that fast, although the action scenes were drawn in a fairly dynamic way. The PDF copy I got had very clear lettering; on the other hand, some panels appeared a little bit blurry, and I don’t know if this is on purpose, or just a scanning problem due to this being an ARC. As for Ash, sometimes he really looked like the one from the movies, but not always; that was disconcerting.

An OK read for me, though a somewhat forgettable one. I’m not sure I’d pick the next volume.

Yzabel / June 2, 2014

Review: The Girl With All The Gifts

The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey

My rating: [rating=5]

Summary:

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her ‘our little genius’.

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children’s cells. She tells her favourite teacher all the things she’ll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn’t know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

Review:

(I got a copy through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.)

4.5 stars—to be honest, 3rd person present narration is something I don’t exactly like, and at times (mostly when I picked up the book again after something or other made me stop reading) it made it difficult to get back into it. However, I suspect in this case, it’s really a matter of personal preference, and every time the story pulled me back in in seconds, anyway.

There’s something both deeply disturbing and fascinating to this novel. At first sight, it looked like a “traditional” enough post-apocalyptic story, with humans surviving in locked-down places while looking for a way to go back to how the world used to be, or at least, find a way to keep strong and going. But as I went into the story, more and more little differences appeared. Maybe not that many, maybe not enough to warrant a giant “this is so different” label… yet still taking me gradually further from what I expected.

There’s a survival trek through zombie-infested territory. There’s a scientist doing research, hoping to find a vaccine. There’s the hard-boiled soldier and the rookie, protecting the group. There’s a civilian who wants to believe in something better. There’s the kid, Melanie, strange Melanie, so smart yet also so innocent, because she’s never seen the world outside of the classroom. This somewhat dysfunctional group is complemented by both strength and dysfunctionality within the characters themselves—though it’s hard to describe without walking into, well, spoiler-infested territory.

Caldwell is partly doing her research out of spite, the 25th scientist on a list of 24 “chosen ones” who were supposed to work to eradicate the plague; even though she’s dying, she keeps going on, wanting to understand, wanting her life to have a meaning, wanting to succeed where the others failed, and somehow “playing god” regarding her “specimens”. Justineau, who acts fiercely protective towards the kids in general, and Melanie more specifically, has a selfish reason of her own to do so, maybe to try and find absolution. Born in a shitty world, Kieran had a shitty childhood which he wanted to escape, yet never really managed to. Parks comes out as quite an asshole, but he’s seen his share of horrors, and his distrust of Melanie is understandable. As for Melanie herself, her innocence combines with an acute awareness of her own nature, and the world and people who’ve been shaping her don’t realise until it’s too late what her existence really means.

There are so many things I’d like to say about this novel; doing so, though, is likely to make me spoil another reader’s pleasure.

I liked the idea behind the “zombie plague”: not a virus, not a pathogen, but a fungus—it’s the first time I see this angle played in a story, at least. The science describing its behaviour seemed believable to me (I’m not a scientist, however, so I could be mistaken). Being a fungus, another aspect plays a part, on top of blood and bites: spores, and that was ended up being the most frightening, because can the surviving humans really escape such tiny particles? Avoiding zombie encounters, wearing armour, establishing secured aread: comparatively, this is easy. But spores? The whole concept also led to eerie descriptions that left me with a feeling of unease mixed with fascination: a silent city, its streets littered with corpses long decayed, out of which strange fungi sprouted, growing, growing, and who knew when they’d reach maturity, and start spreading those dreadly spores?…

The ending fascinated me as well, because of all it implied, all the unspoken outcomes it could lead to, all its ambiguity and imperfection. The hope it carries is a very twisted one, perhaps even a false one. (What follows is major spoiler material, so don’t click if you don’t want to know.)

This ending? Irony to the power of ten. Melanie has basically become Caldwell, drawing from the scientist’s example, shaping the world according to her own belief of what will be the best solution, engaging a procedure with no turning point, and using the hands of a dying man to do so. She has trapped Helen in a role she, herself, thought as a perfect existence: the kind teacher guiding the kids, the teacher whose lessons were always the best part of the week… but is this what Helen wanted and liked? Not so much. The specimen has become the dispassionate scientist, while the protector has become the prisoner. The base is gone. The men are gone. The children are a new form of life, but one that doesn’t lend itself to much hindsight yet, and even with guidance and teaching, who can tell whether they’ll succeeded in making a new world?

So, I loved this book. So much that I was willing to forgive its narration (something that might have broken another story for me). Unless zombie stories gross you out, I’d definitely recommend it.

Yzabel / April 21, 2014

Review: What Remains

What Remains by Kay Holland

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

Project Fed. It was supposed to be the answer to hunger, but
instead, it was the destruction of the world as we knew it. The growth of chemically enhanced “super” fruits and vegetables began in unmarked farms across the Nations, as well as their distribution in small towns. Within hours of Project Fed’s first delivery and primary consumption, something far beyond expectancy was unleashed. Something far beyond what anyone could help.

Four months later, Seventeen year old Max Cade is trying to
survive amongst what remains of her old life. In an effort to escort an awry “Doctor” from one camp to the next, she will have to reintroduce her two young friends to the horrors beyond their shelter that she so badly wanted to shield them from. Getting there was supposed to be the easy part, but when travelling through a world of ruin, sometimes the undead have other plans.

Review:

[I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. The book already been published when I requested it, I don’t think it was an ARC.]

From the blurb, as well as from the first two chapters, this novel had an interesting premise, and looked like a short, nice read; alas, I didn’t enjoy it.

First problem: too many spelling mistakes and misused words. I know a lot of books out there contain the odd typo, and I wouldn’t nitpick about one, but too many will just throw me out of the story, and this is exactly what happened. A few examples:

“Something still stirred in her bowls after all of this time”
“their since of security”
“the extent of differentially”
“A few interns had committed suicide due to depression and fear” (I think the right word was “inmates”?)
“psychical” in place of “physical”

Also weird sentence structures:

“made helped him to decide”
“Just behind him whom Max thought to be his father was standing at the makeshift hole/window watching the kid and wearing a blank face.”

After a while, it really gets hard to ignore those. (There are also a couple of weird tense shifts, as well as point of view changes that sometimes made it confusing when it comes to know who’s thinking/doing what.)

Another problem: the dichotomy between blurb and book. We readers immediately know what caused the epidemics, but the characters learn about it some 69% in, and in a kind of passing way, as if so many people already knew, except for them. I wouldn’t have minded the late reveal, if the blurb hadn’t given it away from the beginning. So basically the whole mystery about the “virus” petered out quickly, and I wondered what was the point.

The story also runs into several plot holes. The well-locked store where they find shelter, for instance: no infected has been able to enter it in months, yet the characters just waltz in? Or a character whos named before he was formally introduced (probably a typo more than a plot hole… but still annoying). Or the crazy camp captain who threatens to throw them out without their weapons if they don’t do his bidding, yet never takes their guns to better keep them under his thumb.

I couldn’t like nor connect with the characters either. Too much telling about their feelings, for starters; as a result, they came off as bland and more like generic zombie-novel-archetypes rather than real people (and Peter being so ready for a zombie apocalypse, just like that? Hmmm…). They also displayed contradictory reactions (Max knows Paul was only a pre-med student, yet blames him for not being a “real doctor”—he never said he was). Sometimes, those even reached the Too Stupid To Live zone: Paul doesn’t do much when it comes to defending himself, and although they know that travelling by car attracts zombies, they still jump in one as soon as they get the opportunity. Guess what happens next?

The novel does contain good ideas that clearly have their place in such a genre: trust issues; fear of losing one’s “family” because any such connection can be severed at any moment; difficult decisions to make (abandoning someone who may or may not be infected); people going overboard, their crazy desire for control running amok now that there’s no more real society to keep them in check. Unfortunately, those weren’t enough to counterbalance the many mistakes and abrupt transitions.

Yzabel / August 30, 2013

Review: Under a Graveyard Sky

Under a Graveyard Sky by John Ringo

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

A family of survivors who fight back against a zombie plague that has brought down civilization.

Zombies are real. And we made them. Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse? The Smith family is, with the help of a few marines.

When an airborne “zombie” plague is released, bringing civilization to a grinding halt, the Smith family, Steven, Stacey, Sophia and Faith, take to the Atlantic to avoid the chaos. The plan is to find a safe haven from the anarchy of infected humanity. What they discover, instead, is a sea composed of the tears of survivors and a passion for bringing hope.

For it is up to the Smiths and a small band of Marines to somehow create the refuge that survivors seek in a world of darkness and terror. Now with every continent a holocaust and every ship an abattoir, life is lived beneath a graveyard sky.

Review:

(I received an ebook ARC of this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This is an oddball to review, and I still don’t know what to think of it.

On the one hand, I liked the ideas developed in it. A family already having a plan in case of a zombie apocalypse? Well, why not. They have the right connections to be informed of such things first-hand, and it’s not harder to believe in that than in, say, a family during the early Cold War living in fear of, and preparing for, a potential nuclear war. I found it interesting to see them go from “save ourselves” to “let’s try to save as many people as they can”, with all the problems stemming from organising a whole flotilla: fuel, food, who’s going to give the orders, potential dissenters who could become real trouble… Fortunately, the main characters weren’t stupid, and I appreciated seeing them not giving weapons to just anyone, and remaining just the right shade of paranoid in that regard.

On the other hand, the pacing of the book really puzzled me. I was expecting it to be more about the survival part, but the first half went much more slowly compared to the second one (the one about gathering survivors and organising a new society at sea). Some of the decisions taken by highers up seemed too crazy to be believable (for instance, who they enlisted to help create a vaccine…), and there were moments when things went like a breeze, not giving much sense of urgency. The concert at the end of part one was another mind-boggling element: fun to read on the moment, but not making that much sense in hindsight. And then we switch to part two, without having actually seen the full unfolding of the apocalypse, going from some zombies in the streets to full already-wiped-out civilisation. I guess I’d have liked to see more of that, and earlier in the story. The transition was too abrupt.

Also, the pacing in that second part felt really weird. It was more a slice-of-life (well, slice-of-killing-zombies-spree) kind of story, with lots of switching between the various characters involved, and after a while, this made the book difficult to go on with, in that it lacked smoothness in its transitions. On top of this, Faith above all was a puzzling character. When and where exactly did she get the training that allowed her to kick ass the way she did? How come she didn’t get crazy (there are some bits about that towards the end, but not as well-exploited as they could have been)?

“Under a Graveyard Sky” has a lot of potential, but in the end, it didn’t cut it for me. Too bad, because I wish it had.