Zombies. Everyone has their own theory about these sci-fi monsters. And in our dystopian loving culture, most of us even have a Zombie-Readiness plan. My husband and I even wrote it into our wedding vows.
And no, I’m not kidding.
Most of our ideas about zombies are pretty much the same: virus infects human, human becomes zombie, zombie bites healthy human, healthy human becomes zombie. Zombies are brainless, animal-like creatures motivated only by the need to feed.
That in itself is scary as hell. But you can kill them in those conventional stories by shooting their mushy heads off with a shotgun, or running them over with a lawnmower.
But there are so many of those stories, and so they are no longer scary.
And then Sam Sisavath comes along and rips our traditional zombie motif to shreds. Hell, he doesn’t even call them zombies. They are Ghouls. Which is probably appropriate, because these bastards are NOT brainless.
No way.
Instead, they have a hive mind. As in, they talk to each other inside their heads–Animorph-style–and they have a military structure, with a commander and soldiers. They PLANNED their invasion.
Da FUCK?!
GUYS THESE THINGS ARE SCARY AS SHIT.
Ok, so the rest of the characters are a little one dimensional. The book is your typical Brad Pitt/Katie Holmes type action hero story line at first, and you add another blonde later for a complicated love triangle. There’s also a “Army battle buddy who makes bad jokes about women” character in the mix, so he was a laugh and a half.
If it were up to those characters alone, I would not have kept going, but the zombies were so different, I wanted to know what was going on with them. They were the interesting part of the story, and worth the read. However, I probably won’t continue on with the series. This isn’t my typical genre, and while I like the direction Sisavath is taking his monsters, the characters are just too flat for me to follow them on.
If you like sci-fi, zombies, and/or dystopian, check this out. Just be wary that the guys in this book are…well…guys, I suppose.
Fulfills PopSugar #22: A book that scares you
As I Lay Reading 