Victim Zero in Apocalypse Whenever

Sep 21, 2017 Colleen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, zombies

Well I'm pumped. Looks like there's like 5-6 more books to this series so I'll have to get on that. Looks like these books sprung from a blog and my copy has a very self published feel (super fucked up typesetting throughout kind of gives that away), but it's better written than like 90% of the zombie books out there. And I didn't notice a single grammatical or spelling mistake--so special shame to some of the more "professional" books out there that are riddled with errors.

Even though he wrote Well I'm pumped. Looks like there's like 5-6 more books to this series so I'll have to get on that. Looks like these books sprung from a blog and my copy has a very self published feel (super fucked up typesetting throughout kind of gives that away), but it's better written than like 90% of the zombie books out there. And I didn't notice a single grammatical or spelling mistake--so special shame to some of the more "professional" books out there that are riddled with errors.

Even though he wrote the later series first, I decided to begin with this "prequel" because that's the benefit of catching onto something waaay after the fact. Kelvin, our hero, once a child prodigy with multiple doctorates in his early twenties, a 300 pound "giant" black man, with a newborn and doting wife, discovers a parasitic lifeform that has the potential to cure all ailments. Only flaw is when introduced into mice and monkeys, makes them go insane and murder all the other animals in the cage. But evil pharmaceutical company starts human testing without his knowledge, and well... cue zombie apocalypse when it goes airborne (zombie bites don't transform you, but if you die, you come back and the zombies begin to evolve as the mutation hops).

I can see what other reviews complained about. He is a bit too perfect, with like no discernible flaws other than a tendency to moralize at terrible times--but I can overlook that. Once again, a giant chunk of the book is about rape when he rescues two women from a pack of rapey mauraders and this is of course something that's revisited multiple times when the two women take him to their safe haven (seemed pretty shitty to me, I don't know why they wanted to go back so bad) and the big finale is them fighting more rapists.

As for my zombie trope list, it doesn't have evil clergy or saddled with plucky child like most, but since the rapists consist of cops & soldiers & assorted deplorables and the government response is super dumb/might as well spray infectious spores from plane, it still hits. The constant rape stuff in zombie novels gets a bit old--I roll my eyes when I realize well, here's the main plot point, since it's an easy way to make the hero a "good guy" and still sex it up, introduce a women (in this case 2), and have obvious villains--so it feels cheap & hackneyed and it did here as well to a degree. But I read last week that survey where 1 out of 3 men said they would rape a woman if there was no chance of being found out ("Almost a third of the men (31.7 percent) said that in a consequence-free situation, they’d force a woman to have sexual intercourse")--and the theme of this book is that in a zombie apocalypse who you really are gets revealed. Though there is something I think to be said that it's predominantly male authors that use this plot theme over & over again (not that I've read many female authors in this genre--maybe half a dozen--but oddly looking at women penned zombie books, not a single one deals with rape). Although to be fair, this book is NOT the worst offender and takes a much more humanistic stance than most (to a somewhat absurd degree). I'm just complaining in general.

The end didn't make sense to me. (view spoiler)

But the author has a great way with dialogue and action and I wolfed this book down. Will have to get all the rest! ...more

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Oct 09, 2015 ☼Bookish in Virginia☼ rated it liked it · review of another edition

An interesting take on the end of the world and zombie apoc. In Guess' book we actually get to follow the man who found the nascent organism that would eventually be altered to become the Zombie maker.

Now about the rating. Don't get me wrong, many people will find this book entertaining, but I can't give it more than 3 stars.

The wordsmithing is good. Otherwise I wouldn't have finished it as I have a low tolerance for authors who can't string sentences together into nice paragraphs. What I found ...more

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Jun 22, 2013 Michelle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: end-of-world, horror, series

Done. For those who read this blog (Living with the Dead) or Joshua's other books published from the blog posts this is a great back story. For those who have never read the blogs or books, no worries there isn't anything you miss out on. Loved it! Can Not Wait for book 2! ...more

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