I don't normally write reviews for average rated books(3 stars), but being that I have been a fan of this writer since his early days. I felt that I needed to explain why I rated this book what I did. If you are not familiar with this author he wrote the
Monster trilogy, which is his take on zombies, and his
Laura Caxton series, which is his vampire stories. I really enjoyed these books, and while I have not read everything he has written I felt that this new book would still be as good as the previous ones I had read.
So I was quite excited to read this book after I had read the plot. Finn is a young man who may or may not have become infected by the zombie virus. In this post-apocalyptic world if a person potentially becomes infected they are marked with a plus sign tattoo on the back of their hand and exiled to a government camp until they either "zombie out" or are cleared to return home. Finn meets with some unexpected twists and turns in what should be a government escort to the Positive camp. In the wilds of the United States not only do people have to evade zombies, but looters and pirates. Sometimes people are more dangerous than the zombies.
First off I have to say if you wanted to read this because you are thinking it is a zombie read you will be sadly disappointed. It features zombies, but the main focus of this book is the dangers of the living and how they look to take advantage of others and sometimes even impose their beliefs on them. This is more of a post-apocalyptic read than a straight up zombie horror read. Quite honestly, it reminded me a lot of Mad Max more so than a zombie book. I had noticed that this once independent author is now being published by Harper. I wonder if this book was rushed and that the author felt like he needed to complete it soon under the direction of the publisher. I say this because the story seems to be written as if it were hastily finished. Once you pass the climax of the story it really seems to zip through events as if they were not really thought out before being committed to a final draft. It really seemed okay up until after this midpoint. I also thought that it was odd that the author would mention his vampire hunter character, and fail to mention her past from his series about her. This and the cob job ending really made me feel that this was not the quality writing that this author used to produce. Would I read a sequel to this story? Maybe, but I would not rush to read it. I hope that any future works he puts out under this publisher are of the same quality that he once had as an independent writer.
