Book Review: Fighting to Survive by Rhiannon Frater

So as I was hanging around Thanksgiving break with a broken ankle and thinking about the upcoming ATZ demo game (see previous post) so I thought I would get in the mood by reading a zombie novel, in this case Fighting to Survive by Rhiannon Frater.  It's the second in her "As the World Dies" trilogy, the first being The First Days.

In broad terms, the book is about a community of survivors of the zombie apocalypse who are living in a fortified construction site.  They decide to expand into a nearby luxury hotel in order to create more space and nicer accommodations.  In the meantime, a roving band of gangers becomes more and more of a threat to them.

The book's two protagonists are Katie and Jenni.  Both lost their families in the first days of the zombie attack, and both are developing new relationships in the survivor community.  For Katie this means overcoming her grief of losing her wife and realizing that she is falling in love with Travis, a leader of the group.  For Jenni this means dealing with the trauma of her previously abusive spouse and the death of her children.  Jenni isn't the most stable of individuals, and her sanity gets more precarious as the book goes on.

I have said in other reviews that for me the mark of a good zombie story--book, movie, or other--is how it handles the people element, not the zombie gore.  What this book does right is explore how a small, isolated community like this one has to cope with the challenges in a post-zombie world.  Some members of the community struggle with the collapse of class distinctions.  The question of how to address crime within the group is gone into detail.  There is also the issue of the role of vigilantism and the post-zombie social contract.  It's not dissimilar from what is going on right now in The Walking Dead with Carol being expelled from the TV series' community, and it what makes the book particularly interesting.

That's not to say the book doesn't have its grisly moments, but they are not gratuitous in nature.  In terms of pathos, the book is actually pretty light in tone, which could either be a plus or a minus, depending on the tastes of the reader.  There's distinctly a romantic overtone to the book as well, which wasn't a negative per se for me but might not be everyone's cup of tea.

A good read for hanging out by the pool in a leg cast.

Book Review: Autumn

Interesting story behind Autumn by David Moody.  Apparently Moody, a fan of such books as War of the Worlds and movies like Night of the Living Dead, wanted to write his own horror novel but lacking any literary credentials couldn't get picked up by a publisher.  So, with the internet hitting its own (2003) he decided to give away the book for free.  A few hundred thousand downloads later, and he's sold the movie rights, started his own publishing house, and cranked out several sequels.  The movie came out in 2009--I may have to go check it out.

The story behind Autumn is that a (unrealistically) rapid, lethal virus kills off over 99% of the human population of the earth in what appears to be hours.  Now I'm no epidemiologist or a meteorologist, but I didn't think air currents could carry a germ that quickly.  But hey, I'm looking for good science from a zombie novel.  In an English town the handful of survivors first have to deal with the shock and collapse of civilization, followed by the revival of a fraction of the disease victims as zombies.

At first, the zombies aren't even dangerous--they are just wandering, mindless corpses, but later they start to home in on the living, and they significantly out number them.  There's no suggestion of contagious bite/kill stuff at play here, the zombies just seem to want to destroy anything that lives or more specifically makes noise.

The main characters are three survivors and most of the plot revolves around their group dynamic (what with the zombies not being threatening until almost halfway through the book).  The story also has the usual zombie fare: the grocery store pillaging, the crazy guy lifted straight out of the movie Psycho with the zombie family member (the same guy appeared in Dead Reckoning too), etc.  I also noticed that the main trio also closely resembled the central three characters from the movie Shallow Grave, including having one of them go up into the attic and spy on the others.

It's clear by the time you get to the end of the book that the author wanted to leverage this into something more.  There's no real ending, not even a cliffhanger.  The story just stops, awaiting the next novel in the series.  What's more, the characters are more interesting in the beginning of the story but sort of fritter away in terms of personality.  By the end they are just generic individuals working towards survival.  [SPOILER FOLLOWS]



What's worse, the most interesting character doesn't even make it to the end, and even that is foreshadowed so heavily it isn't much of an event.  I can't figure out if I want to give Autumn: the City a try just to see if the author starts to get into the good stuff (stuff that maybe he didn't want to give away for free) or just let this series go.  We'll see.

Book Review: Dead Reckoning

I am not a frequent reader of zombie novels, liking the movie option much better for my zombie fare (World War Z being a noteworthy exception) but I thought I would see if I could kick-start my ATZ zombie solo-campaign at my public library.  I picked up literally at random Dead Reckoning: Dawning of the Dead by Anthony Giangregorio.  Dead Reckoning is published by "Living Dead Press" which appears to do nothing but publish zombie novels.
To put it bluntly, Dead Reckoning is one step up from fan fiction, and it is a short step.  The book appears to be an unauthorized sequel to the movie Dawn of the Dead, featuring Fran and Peter from the movie.  In the preface the author admits to wanting to know what happened to them after they escaped the Philadelphia shopping mall, and decided to write story himself.
In Dead Reckoning Fran and Peter make their way to Pittsburgh where the non-zombie population has dwindled down to two groups, a group of relatively regular survivors lead by a man named Pearson, and a group of tough guys led by a man named Carver.  The two groups are in constant conflict over the remaining supplies in Pittsburgh, which now include the helicopter belonging to Fran and Peter.
What I liked about the book was, for all of its underwhelming narrative and lack of real horror, was the scenarios Giangregorio created pitching Pearson's survivors versus Carver's gangers.  Much of the book has the two groups battling over grocery stores and warehouses, and I could easily see converting these into any wargaming scene.  What was really lacking was the zombies being a legitimate threat.  The characters were too good at killing them, rarely missing when shooting them in the head or going into hand-to-hand.  Only fickle fate or gross incompetence seemed to really pose a problem.  The real peril is Carver, who is both more violent and possessing greater weaponry.
The ending is a huge meh, and frankly flies in the face of Giangregorio's stated desire to see a resolution to the plot of Dawn of the Dead.  Fran and Peter spend most of their (surprisingly limited) time in the book woolgathering about what happened in the film.  Given that he has written no less than eighteen other zombie novels for Living Dead Press, I'm sure he has ample opportunity to do so elsewhere, however.