Wave of Mutilation

by Sean E. Britten

Jules and Tony are two Mafia soldiers looking to make a name for themselves with their first hit. The assassination goes off without a hitch, until their target gets back up with twenty bullets in his chest and a taste for human flesh. Cyndi Hong has no idea how much the world has changed when she leaves her Manhattan apartment, then she runs into a feasting gang of undead cannibals on her morning commute. Anybody who dies rises as a zombie, endlessly hungry for living flesh, and anybody they bite, dies. Soon, hundreds of thousands of single-minded ghouls are teeming in and around New York. The military are failing to contain the situation and there’s nowhere safe to run. Escaping from the city, Cyndi meets Jules and Tony and takes refuge in the home of their employer, the ruthless mob boss Nicholas Marcello. Before long Cyndi and the others are looking for a safe place, any safe place. They take to the open ocean, finding new threats and new allies. Following the only beacon of hope that they have Cyndi and the others find themselves among a new community, but when people start to disappear it becomes apparent that not everything is as it appears. Surrounded by predators both living and dead, Russian sex-traffickers, psychotic soldiers and waves upon waves of zombies, they’ll find themselves doing whatever it takes to survive.

370 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2015

Reviews

[S.K. Munt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five Zombie Stars!


Wave of Mutilation is the zombie apocalypse novel for zombie apocalypse novel enthusiasts who have been there, read that- and are eager to skip to the meaty part of the genre without having to chew the fat for too long. It starts fasts, ends fast and gives fans of the genre exactly what they’ve bought their ticket for: a swift spread of the infected, a lot of action, a lot of gore and a lot of zombie ass-kicking. 

The ‘infected’ premise was interesting. It’s not just a matter of getting bitten or scratched- anyone who dies in any way comes back to life, so the very beginning reminded me a little of Night Of The Living Dead and ends up more like Train To Busan. You don’t understand why the dead bodies are getting up, but that doesn’t matter because they’re coming for you so you better work out how to put them down so that they stay down, and then be careful how close you are to anyone else that goes down!

The characters aren’t exactly complex but they’re definitely of the anti-hero variety and that cleared the way for the intense amount of action within the novel, without pesky emotional hang-ups getting in the way of things. There’s no angst or personal drama, no inner demons to be overcome, no reflections on the past and perhaps most surprisingly for this drama- very little debate about right versus wrong. The zombies simply move and regenerate too fast for anyone to have the chance to hesitate in order to contemplate their next move or weigh how it will affect themselves or others, it’s simply action spurring swift reflex reaction and that makes it entertaining rather than nerve-wracking.

I was a bit surprised by a few occurrences in the opening sequences that basically raised the survival bar to incredibly vexing heights, when the heroine does something in order to get onto a helicopter and out of there that was a bit shocking to me. One minute she’s a mild-tempered rather scared asian office worker and the next she’s an assassin that will do anything to save her own ass and it really set the tone for the story. To be honest, I didn’t actually care what happened to the characters in this novel for the first sixty percent because you don’t have a whole lot of personal information on them to inspire empathy, but the author then shrewdly creates a whole cast of bad guys that are so much worse than the bad good guys that you end up rooting for them anyway.

Wave Of Mutilation is definitely a lighter apocalypse read than the ones that I’ve read before, but that’s a refreshing change for me, and would be for you poor Walking Dead enthusiasts who are probably sick of crying over this genre- Zombie Apocalypse novels are supposed to be fun, frightening, a little bit sick and twisted and demonstrate the crumbling of society as we know it, and Wave Of Mutilation is all of this and more. It plays out like an action screenplay in your head and I can just imagine that a movie adaption would be amazing. 

Get into it if you enjoy Zombies- at all! Five masticated Zombie thumbs-up!

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Waves of Mutilation" is a zombie apocalypse novel which is greatly entertaining and serves as a great thrill-ride for those who miss the days when the undead were an actual threat on The Walking Dead. From the very beginning of the book when a pair of mobsters bungle a hit, only for their target to rise from the grave to when the dead rise in the morgue to when the entirety of the world explodes into a violent 28 Days later-esque murderfest--this book is wall-to-wall action.

The protagonists tend to be of the anti-hero variety and it reminds me a bit of how a Quentin Tarantino zombie movie would have gone. This isn't the kind of book where there's a lot of sitting down and talking about the end of the world, it's more one action scene after the other. Some people will be put off by that but I found it an enjoyable action movie from beginning to end.

I've read a lot of zombie fiction in my life and I have to say the ones in this book are probably some of the most formidable in fiction. I also appreciate the fact the author doesn't bother to come up with a reason for why the dead are rising, they just are. We, the readers, knew this was a zombie novel coming in so we don't need to be told a made-up story why. Since all of the dead are rising, though, it seems like humanity may well be utterly screwed here.

The book reminds me of the Dead Island or Left For Dead games and that's good praise.