A winning cast of characters breathes life into a worn but still entertaining subgenre.
In O’Connell’s horror series starter, the survivors of a global pandemic take a stand against the undead while also confronting fiends among the uninfected.
Charlie Billingsworth is one of the relatively few people who are immune to an airborne virus that’s wiped out most of Earth’s population. Those who have succumbed to the disease have essentially become zombies that crave living flesh. Charlie easily handles himself among the monstrous hordes as he goes on supply runs for the Community, a band of survivors who’ve settled near Boston. During a hunt for fuel, he happens upon a couple of young kids named Trey and Ellie; he immediately takes a shine to them and fights to protect them. Meanwhile, survivor Kalila Trout seeks revenge against a figure named King George, who leads a heavily armed group who recently slaughtered her post-apocalypse foundfamily. She wants revenge and may get vital assistance in her mission from Charlie, especially after King George’s minions snatch one of the children. O’Connell injects a good deal of adrenaline into the narrative: Charlie and others dodge, hide from, or scuffle with zombies while armed with guns, crossbows, or, in Charlie’s case, a trusty machete. Fans of zombie fiction won’t find much that’s new here; a later revelation involving King George’s people, for instance, comes as little surprise. Still, the author gradually adds intriguing elements that enhance the narrative and the series’ potential. Ellie, for instance, displays astonishing abilities, and a new breed of zombies threatens what few survivors are left. Charlie is an appealing and believable hero; his close-quarter fights are realistic, and his plans to keep himself and others safe don’t always work out as expected. Readers can only hope the dependable supporting cast makes it to future installments—particularly Ellie, who communicates only by whispering, and the formidable zombie-killer Big Berthaat the Community.
A winning cast of characters breathes life into a worn but still entertaining subgenre.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 249
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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