The Purge of Babylon

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

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The Darkest Minds

Staying true to the norm, once again I am way behind on another very popular YA trilogy. Everyone started OOING and AAHing over In the Afterlight  by Alexandra Bracken when it came out this year, and when I looked it up–what? It’s the last book?!?!?!

Lucky for me, the release of the final book meant that Hey! The first ebook was free on Amazon. Woot! So, I’m catching up.

The Darkest Minds can be described, basically, as another one of those love triangle dystopian YA trilogies, but there’s quite a bit going on–and from what I can tell, at least, the love triangle only seems to last for this book. At least the third branch of it. *shudder*

But let’s back up. The story begins with a sickness that rages through the children of the United States, hitting around age 10. It seems to have no effect on adults, as it is linked to the onset of puberty. Most of the children die instantly, but those that aren’t killed take on 5 different styles of superpowers. And the adults are absolutely terrified, so they send them all off to internment camps. Great parenting, huh?

This book is basically Lord of the Flies in modern times, except the adults are still around, and absolutely pissed off. The setting is very zombie-movieish, without any zombies. Everything is complete and utter destruction, everyone lives in camps outside the city because the economy has completely tanked. It’s madness.

The concept is pretty brilliant, really, and terrifying. I will say that the book is a little confusing at first, but once you start to understand Ruby, everything falls into place and the action picks up. This is a trilogy I’ll be continuing, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a movie come out of this one either. It wouldn’t be a hard world to design since it is based on reality, and it’s quite a different concept from what is already out there.

 

Fulfills PopSugar #34:  A book with a love triangle

Bird Box

I received an invite to a new Goodreads Bookclub called BookClubFiction the other day. Because I can’t refuse a request like that of course I had to pick up September’s book…even if I only had a few days before the end of the time period! After finishing The Name of the Rose…that left, well, today. No big deal, right?

Hubby has spent the afternoon flipping through college football, and we’ve been completely lazy all day long. Perfect for a little speed reading.

And Bird Box was a great book to do in a day. This is a very M. Night Shyamalan kind of book. Think The Village or The Happening. Something is out there, causing people to kill themselves….but no one knows what it is. The book refers to them as “creatures,” but pretty much people are going insane after they see…things.

I devoured this book by Josh Malerman. It’s very post-apocalyptic, and so so creepy. I love these dystopian-type books that are almost zombie-like, except the monster is an unnamed enemy. They are chilling, because we don’t really know what is going to end our society, we just know that eventually, something is going to end it. It’s the same feeling I had after reading Not a Drop to Drink, and watching The Last Ship.

This is an adult dystopian. There’s no weird love triangle, and it’s very very bloody. They also describe childbirth in all it’s gory wonderfulness, so just be prepared for that. Also, as I stated before, people kill themselves, and there are descriptions on how they do so.

Towards the end, I thought this was ramping up for a sequel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one was written, but there’s not a huge cliffhanger at the end. Malerman did wrap it up pretty cleanly. I would like to see what happens next and would definitely read a second book if there was one. I’m not sure I would want to see a movie on this–I think it would end up being too much of a slasher instead of the psychological thriller that the book is.

Check this out if you are a Stephen King fan, or if you liked Mindy McGinnis. You’ll appreciate this one too!

The Death Cure

OH.

 

MY.

 

GOD.

 

 

Seriously guys, I’m considering that to be the only review of the ending of this trilogy. Because that’s really all my brain is saying right now. OH.MY.GOD.

If you haven’t read this yet, get your hands on it immediately. Of all the dystopian series that have come out recently, this is one of the most horrifying. It ranks right up there with 1984. I loved this series. But this is not for the light hearted. People had a lot to say about The Hunger Games and Divergent. And yes, those two were alarming, and political, and a lot of other things. I enjoyed them both. But WOAH to they pale in comparison to what I just read. I usually take zombie stories with a grain of salt. But the way Dashner builds this one up makes it seem completely plausible, I think because until the very end it isn’t very “zombie-like.” You just know everyone is severely mentally sick in the second book. And by the third book, everything is just soooooo messed up. The ending just blew me away. Seriously, when you read the Epilogue, I can promise you, you will drop your book.

OH.MY.GOD.  I loved this.