Shades of Survival

by Robyn Watts

Hollywood shows us their idea of survival in the end of the world, apocalyptic scenarios. But what would it really be like? How would you actually cope and survive?

Shades of survival is a journal type account of one person's desperate attempt at surviving the apocalypse. Dealing with the dead walking, the living attacking, periods and lack of hair dye. They come across different types of people, dealing with different situations and learning that Hollywood can only glamourize what would, and ultimately does, drive the average person crazy.

156 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2022

Reviews

[ReadwithEmm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick easy read that is sure to get you out of a readers slump! If you like the walking dead, lone survivor, zombie apocalypse, this is your book!
Written as letters to the reader explaining how the world came to how it is, and best way to survive!
Excellent writing style that ensured the readers could picture exactly what was happening

[Eric Lahti · Rating 5 out of 5]

In literature, the big name in zombie books has to be Brooks’ World War Z. The comic rendition of The Walking Dead was good, but World War Z was on a whole other level. World War Z had the temerity to reimagine the zombie hordes and giving us a worldwide look at how the whole planet dealt with the dead rising. Now, let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way: There are some similarities between World War Z and Shades of Survival, but there are important differences, too. In a genre that’s been kicking around for over a hundred years – at least in film and probably in lit, too – there’s going to be some cross-pollination going on. It’s inevitable and understandable. But each new interpretation brings the creator’s voice to the moaning, grumbling hordes of Wal-Mart shoppers at Christmastime.

So, what are the similarities? Well, for starters Shades of Survival has a similar theory of rolling out its massive, world-ending tale in bite-sized chunks rather than following a straight narrative. They’re both large tales told in vignettes. Apocalyptic amuse-bouche. There are major differences, too. Shades keeps the narrative tightly focused on one person rather than the entire planet and is told in a series of letters written by one woman as she watches first the world then her world collapse around her. Like all good stories, it has moments of levity and moments of sheer terror. It also spends a goodly deal of time taking a hard look at the living, uninfected people who still inhabit the world and just how they fall to their animal natures. Almost as if virus mutated and while it tuned the vast majority of people into nigh-unstoppable killing machines, it turned the some of the rest into massive assholes.

Read the whole review on my blog