Steven Allen > Recent Status Updates

I have always found rabies to be a fascinating disease. In my zombie writing, my KCAP virus is based mostly on the rabies genome. As the world's most deadly virus, rabies is unparalleled in the world.

I love me a good monster story. Ever since I read Jaws as a young teen, and my favorite Tokyo-destroying Godzilla movies I enjoy a good monster tale. This story does not disappoint, even though the name is a rather dead give away of the monster.

My friend Keli called this book "essentially getting lost on Wikipedia for about 6 hours." She was right. It is somewhat interesting but a little disappointing. Not quite what I was hoping for.

I blame Keli for getting me interested in this fascinating book about medical curiosities.

Still on a SciFi kick, so started this series set in the early days of the Legion of the Damned. I enjoy Dietz's books about the Legion, and expect this one to be as good or better than the other Legion books I have read. I served alongside the real French Legion for a few weeks, and was impressed with their professionalism, While fictitious, this rendition maintains the spirit and esprit de corps of the Legion.

Story is going like I expected, young Helfort has been reunited with his love, and is now fighting with the rebels (hmm, tones of Star Wars?). I am expecting that the young, rescued lady will probably be killed in battle, thus creating a tragic hero who only loved one woman, We'll see how the story plays out but I wonder if this author has not become predictable.

Story is going like I expected - the young LT has gone rogue but managed to rescue his honey, despite marooning himself on a hostile planet.

This is a little different twist in the zombie/SciFi genre. The zombies are purposely reanimated by technology rather than by a virus, germ, radiation, etc. Started fairly well, action is good with plenty of shooting, stuff blowing up, zombie suicide bomber, and extremely cool cybernetic gadgets. Story has gotten a little slow with police work and the protagonist chasing his tail. So far not too many Chekhov guns.

I have read all of this series and have enjoyed them immensely. This book is much darker than the other, dealing with depression and characters killing loved ones as they have lost all rational thought. In a zombie-infested world where you fight every day for your survival - I could see events happening as mankind loses any semblance of civility.

So the story is a little predictable, but I did like the rescue of another poor soul from slavery. This story reminds me a lot of Firefly (my apologies to the author if that is an unfair comparison) with a family of misfits just trying to get by in the universe.

So I found my first editing mistake in this book. No editor (even this one) is perfect. I do like how the story is picking up so far with the new mission to another frozen hell of a planet.

Story is moving well.