DNR
I wasn’t able to get very far into this story for many reasons. I have come to realize once I hit a certain point in my notetaking, it’s usually time for me to stop. That’s what happened here.
I couldn't stand Danny. He annoyed me to no end with his comments about Box. Whether he was a zombie or if he was involved with the people who set off the mortar, even though none of them knew who fired it. On a side note, you're given the task to name someone and you go with Box. Why?
There was so much repetition/redundancy - stating things that were common sense or should have been common sense. It seemed to focus on nouns. It was hard for me to believe this wasn’t the author’s first book. For example: Danny: “Do you have any bites on YOUR BODY?”
Woman: “No.”
Danny: “We need to inspect YOUR BODY.”
Or “The camp turned out to be a WAREHOUSE… A chain-link fence encompassed the WAREHOUSE.”
Or there were buildings that were covered in graffiti THAT WAS SCRAWLED ON THEM.” (A perfect example of redundancy. What does graffiti mean? Where else would the graffiti be?)
The narrator annoyed me. I was very annoyed overall, I guess. When he spoke normally/naturally, he was fine. But the voice he did for the narration and Porter's voice was an I'm-trying-to-sound-tough voice or the voice of a detective from the fifties or even... Batman. It was just too unnatural sounding, dragging out words that didn’t need to be. I’ve said this many times in reviews: A narrator can make or break a story. In this case, he added nothing to it.
Comments/Questions:
There were way too many simple (no action) dialogue tags. When there are only two characters talking, there is no need to constantly go with "Porter said... Danny said" every time one of them spoke. There was also too much repetitiveness between Porter and Danny about what they thought was going on with Box, the PTSD, him being a zombie or whatever.
The conversation between Porter and Danny with the "wino" was too long. It just dragged with the repetitive "he's not one of them" or something along that line. A similar conversation took place after they got back to the campsite too.
At the beginning, when Box went to stand, it said his legs "were stiff and sore." Given this part of the story was not being told in Box's POV, ie only Box would know his legs were sore, this was a mess-up. After this, I realized the POV changed a lot between Box and Porter within the same scene which was a no-no. You want to stick to one POV per scene unless the story is plot-driven. Whereas I believe this one is character-driven. One time the POV went to the rats that had been eating the horse. Then it changed to the lady’s POV after she decided to go with them.
At one point, Box was wracking his “brains.” And he did this several times.
Besides the above complaints regarding poor writing, there was this: “Porter fired the Taurus engine. He stepped on the gas and drove straight at the mob of ghouls. … Reaching sixty miles an hour with the Taurus, Porter ran into the throng of plotting corpses. His plan was to plow through the wall of living corpses. [First off, unless they’re suddenly in a different vehicle, there’s no need to mention them being in a Taurus again, so soon after it’s first revealed to the reader. The reader should assume they’re still in that same Taurus. Second, “Porter ran into the corpses” is sufficient. Redundancy took over with the next line: “His plan was to plow through the wall of living corpses.” Obviously, that was why he ran through them.
Or there was this scene when they were in the car and zombies were too close. It was essentially written as Danny put up his window. Porter put up his window. Box put up his window.
The reader was told “the president nuked cities to kill the zombies [Should have ended it there] from spreading the plague.” Why else would he have nuked the cities? Zombies are all the same. They spread all over the world, killing people and turning them into zombies.
Here we go with the repeated conversations again. This time it was between Porter and the three-person gang whose car was blocking their way. “They were trying (or wanted) to jack our car.”
The horse appeared from the woods. There was a zombie hanging onto its stomach. The stomach was ripped open with organs spilling out, yet it was still on its feet. Oh, and to add more details to the scene of this one “character,” there were also rats trying to eat the entrails. I felt this was overdone.
“Everything’s going to pot,” the lady said. If the zombies have been around ten years, wouldn’t that have happened years prior? Or her commenting that the gas stations were out of gas. The doc said: “It’s only “teetering” on the brink of chaos”? Keep in mind this is the first book I’ve listened to/read by this author so I don’t know any of the backstory.
How did they know the zombies have spores? Or that people could be asymptomatic if there was no proof that’s possible? They didn’t. Yet they kept talking about both. Why?
After ten years, they still have lots of bandages, enough to waste on little boo-boos?
The lady (whose name, for the life of me, I can’t remember) described how her sister died. “The ghouls bathed in blood, humming in ecstasy.” Right… Again, I felt the details were overdone here. I did find it interesting that Porter and the woman both described their loved ones being killed in such detail.
The woman asked: If Box wasn’t a psychiatrist, how could he know about Stockholm Syndrome? What year was the story taking place in? I’d imagine a high percentage of people know what it means.
“Box knew he was out of shape”… every time he was about to start a new exercise.
The campsite’s people needed drugs “otherwise they’ll revolt.” Why not just leave then? Go on your own path? But, speaking of drugs… there was a cartel still around? With hitmen?
I received a free audiobook code in exchange for a review.