Zombies and alien fiends attack in force in this Michael Bay–style actioner.
A small-town sheriff is the first to discover the incredible truth behind a zombie plague in Chatman’s debut horror novel.
In Ghostwood, West Virginia, widowed Navy SEAL–turned-sheriff Thomas Pratt is distracted from his difficulty parenting his teenage son and daughter by a more urgent crisis. People are being bitten by grotesque, antlike insects and quickly turning into “Spewers”—superstrong and superfast undead who vomit more bugs and spread the contagion. They can be destroyed, though—mainly with gunshots to the head. (Oddly, no one uses the Z-word to describe the infected.) Within days, society collapses as the plague reaches Washington, D.C., but battle-hardened Thomas and other select, die-hard Ghostwood citizens persist—along with savvy street-gang members, military holdouts, and survivalists. Readers are tipped off from the start that a cabal of scientists is behind the coordinated onslaught of insects and infected humans—and when Thomas actually meets the conspirators, they’re revealed to have highly unusual origins. The author doles out numerous scenes of gruesome violence, including torture. However, he stops short of the grindhouse-level gore that one often sees in the zombie subgenre (no chainsaw-wielding cheerleaders here). Indeed, characters reverently invoke God and eschew profane language in favor of soldierly lingo: “We will infiltrate at first light to reduce the chances of enemy contact due to the deadly effect the sun has on them. Two teams, Alpha and Bravo team.” Still, an infusion of sci-fi villainy shifts this material from a tense, straightforward George A. Romero–style tone into comic-book territory, with superbeings laying smack downs on one another amid heroic and vainglorious firefights. The finale is sequel-friendly, indeed. (Not to be confused with 2013’s The Spread, a different zombie-themed novel by Michelle Kilmer and Rebecca Hansen.)
Zombies and alien fiends attack in force in this Michael Bay–style actioner.Pub Date: April 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64214-161-0
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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