Review of Mark Justice and David T. Wilbank’s “Dead Earth: The Vengeance Road”
I have not read what I understand to be a novella that started the Dead Earth Series, entitled “Dead Earth: The Green Dawn”, but the authors did a commendable job bringing me up to speed with what happened in the first story through much of this novel, without any need for a prologue. What that translates to for someone who does forgo the first book is an immediate jump into the action with a story filled with zombies controlled by an alien invasion force dubbed “Necros” (short for Necromancers), by the few surviving humans who remain.
There are two groups of survivors at the outset of this tale. One group is made up of bikers running free and trying to avoid getting eaten while roaming around the Mexican desert in Baja California. Lead by Luther Kemp, there is friction between him and another member of this ragtag gang, whose nickname is Mother…and he is one big Mother, that is for sure. Mother only wants company because there is safety in numbers, while Kemp has bigger plans. The other group is led by a former sheriff’s deputy from New Mexico named Jubal Slate. Jubal is bound and determined to make his way up to Area 51 in Nevada, where the aliens apparently broke through into our dimension, started changing the atmosphere, and raising the dead to help in the take over of humanity.
It seems that those who have survived have some immunity from turning into zombies-they can be bit and survive, though if allowed to die, they too turn in the end. It is an interesting slant, and allows for a few gruesome scenes where I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
Not long into the story, Luther Kemp is bequeathed a gift from one of the Necros, who fly in glider-type machines, as his band of renegades is surrounded by a zombie horde. A metallic band that adheres to his head, giving him power over the undead and the ability to read the minds of the living, as long as he follows the commands of these New Lords over the Dead Earth. That is about the time that Mother realizes that he wants nothing to do with Luther or his little band of devotees, as Kemp decides that he is pretty tickled to serve his new alien masters, as long as he is given power over both the dead and the living humans.
The two groups clash throughout the rest of the story, with both sides making the trek north from Mexico up to Nevada. There is plenty of gory zombie action and interesting variations on that due to the alien influence on the story. The near future time frame add little hints about the earth technology left behind, and we get a big dose of it from one of the secondary characters, who has the ability to tap into the ever diminishing world wide web through a chip implanted in his head. I enjoyed the pacing of the story-it was a fun and easy read. My criticisms of it are mostly tied to whether or not this book is the final chapter in this saga or not. My belief is that based on a very revealing chapter near the end, when a lot of divulged about the aliens and their plans for earth, that this series will continue. Also, without providing a spoiler, I felt that one character’s departure from the story was rather anticlimactic and my guess is that they will return in a future installment. If, however, this is where it all ends, I would be disappointed that there isn’t more to be revealed. My guess is that isn’t the case, though the authors certainly hit a dramatic stopping point which would allow them to leave things as is if that is the route they choose to go.
I felt that the three main characters in this story were all fairly well developed. Jubal taking the fight to aliens and undead was a refreshing change from what we typically see-there is rarely a main target to focus on during the zombie apocalypse, so seeing someone willing to do whatever it takes to undo the undead and the enemies of man was enjoyable to see-he was on his own personal Jihad. I liked the morphing Luther Kemp, as the necro technology he is gifted with starts changing and empowering him in twisted and devious ways. He goes from being a run of the mill sociopath to someone with an almost religious zeal and devotion to his new masters that is frightening. And my favorite character is Mother, the scarred, imperfect, reluctant hero that goes through hell and comes out of it looking for vengeance. He was the most developed and complex of the three, and also the most human of the bunch.
I do look forward to seeing where the Dead Earth series goes, and hope to hear about the promise of another installment from the authors somewhere in the not so distant future.
Dead Earth: The Vengeance Road can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Earth-Vengeance-Mark-Justice/dp/1934861561/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291266382&sr=1-1
Review of Jason S. Hornsby’s “Eleven Twenty-Three”
Layne Prescott is an expatriate returning home to Lilly’s End, Florida from his teaching post in China for the funeral of his father. As he and his girlfriend Tara sit waiting in the airport for their plane that will take them across the Pacific, they meet up with a Mr. Scott, who has a briefcase attached to his wrist by a handcuff in an airport bar. After they land in Florida and meet up with old friends, Layne discovers the same briefcase stuffed inside his luggage. From there, things get dangerously strange, as the world falls apart at 11:23, every twelve hours all over Lilly’s End. People go mad, tearing each other apart, and then killing themselves when there is no one else left to assault. The town is shut off by the government and lies about a smallpox outbreak keep the outside world at bay. All the while, everyone still alive inside of Lilly’s End is rapidly going mad, taking things into their own hands, while Layne and a few of his friends attempt to understand what is behind all of this and try to figure out what they can do to escape it.
That is the glossy overview of this story. Underneath that, this 300 page novel is thick with conspiracy, generation why angst, and a constant flow of confusion, deception, and things for the reader to ponder. I have read Jason Hornsby’s previous novel, Every Sigh, The End, and for a long stretch of that book I despised the main character for his self absorbed approach to life, which takes a radical turn as truths about the world are revealed around him. In many ways, I can say that there are parallels between that book and this one, although Hornsby’s writing has definitely matured with this book. It is clear that this is a Hornsby book-I could have picked it out blindfolded after reading several chapters. As another reviewer has put it, no one creates young, disaffected characters quite like this author. They are disagreeable, argumentative, self-absorbed, and irresistibly fascinating. It is hard to describe effectively, but while it is hard to feel much pity for the characters throughout a great swath of this book, in the end their misery is tangible, palpable, real, and you feel it along with them. Layne is one of those characters who would constantly confound you, but if you peeled away most of his facade, he would seem to be one of the most vulnerable people you might ever know. At least that was the sense I got.
I think after reading my first Hornsby book, I got the sense that the author and I would have very little in common, very little that would connect us. My presumption was that he was much like the characters he wrote. I had the chance to meet the author at a Horror Convention recently and I realized then that this was far from the truth. Hornsby just has a knack for writing characters that make you feel like you are biting down on tinfoil. He has a talent for that.
I will readily admit that I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, and as such, I probably don’t rate as someone who is a judge of the conspiracies that Hornsby presents in this novel, but I will say this-I felt pretty damn squeamish as more and more was revealed in this story, as my imagination was sparked and I tried to comprehend how deep and dark the rabbit hole the author had created was. Mr. Hornsby has created a novel that provides the disaffected youth he writes about with a nightmarish world that is even worse than they could ever imagine, which is quite a trick to pull off. This story was creative, wild, and forces you to pay attention to it at every step. But even if you do, there is more than meets the eye, and will give you something to think about long after you put the book down.
Eleven Twenty-Three can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Eleven-Twenty-Three-Jason-S-Hornsby/dp/1934861340/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285374627&sr=1-1
Looking back at Horror Realm 2010
This past weekend, I got to go to my very first horror convention, Horror Realm, which is held in Pittsburgh. This is a zombie-centric horror conference and gave me and the rest of the authors from The Library of the Living Dead and Permuted Press the chance to meet with horror fans of all stripes, discuss zombies, and have a blast.
Things got going on Thursday night, when those of us who had the chance to come in a bit early were able to head to Rich Dalzotto’s house and mix and mingle with one another. Rich is one of the folks who runs Horror Realm. The party gave me the opportunity to meet and interact with quite a few of the folks I haven’t met face to face before but have corresponded with and spoke to on Skype. Too many to mention here, and I fear that if I start naming names, I will end up skipping someone. So suffice it to say, the party was a lot of fun and a great experience.
Putting up my books and being at the actual show was quite an experience. I have gone to conferences for work before, but never something like this. There were a ton of vendors and quite a few horror celebrities, with reunions for Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead happening at the convention. Even with these celebrities walking around, I gained the most enjoyment in having the chance to get to know a lot of other authors over the three days of the show. Doc, my publisher, was terrific, and so was Jacob Kier, who is the publisher over at Permuted Press. They both took great care of everyone and despite the fact that sales weren’t huge, the show was a rousing success.
One of the highlights for me was getting made up as a zombie to film a commercial for The Library of the Living Dead. All us zombies got to tear into Doc, though it wasn’t blood and guts that came out, but something else entirely. I won’t ruin the surprise, but lets just say we all had a blast filming the commercial.
I wanted post a few pictures I took at Horror Realm here as well, just to provide a flavor of the event and the people I had the pleasure of meeting up with. I am already anxious to go to next year’s event, because if it is half as much fun as this Horror Realm was, it will be well worth the trip!
A Plug for Horror Realm
I will be attending the Horror Realm Convention in a couple of weeks. Horror Realm is one of the premier convention for horror fans, and in particular zombie fans, and is held every year in Pittsburgh, PA, the birthplace of the modern zombie, when George A. Romero filmed Night of the Living Dead there over forty years ago. I haven’t had the opportunity to attend this event in the past, but I am very excited to not only having the chance to be going as a visitor, but also as a member of the Library of the Living Dead’s group of authors who will have tables at the convention. I will be selling and signing my book, Comes The Dark, and sharing space with a large group of other fantastic authors. In addition, I will have the opportunity to read from my novel on Sunday afternoon in one of the Author Panels and will be sharing the stage with Jake Bible, Robert Cordray, and Steve North. It will be a blast hanging out with these great group of writers. I just hope I have the opportunity to check out some of the other panels that are running all weekend long, which include both film and book panels, but I will promoting my book as much as I can, so I may be glued to my table most of the time. Not that I’m complaining-I can hardly wait to have the chance to meet and greet other horror fans like myself and talk up my book.
The Convention runs from September 17th-19th at the Crowne Plaza, Pittsburgh South. Check out the website: http://www.horrorrealmcon.com/ for all the information you’ll need to get tickets, find out who is going to be in attendance, and the schedule of events. That weekend will be jammed packed with a huge array of events that every horror fan will love. I am really looking forward to the costume party on Saturday night. Given that I will be getting all gussied up for a video spot being done a couple of hours before that for the Library of the Living Dead, I will fit in perfectly!
So if you live in the region and have the opportunity, head on over to Horror Realm the weekend of September 17th-19th and check it out. And if you can’t make it, check back here after that weekend to see what pictures I post and the stories I will have to tell about having the chance to meet all these fantastic people involved in writing horror novels and staring in horror films. I’m just hoping I don’t act like a total goofball when I get the chance to meet these people…but there is little doubt that I will.
Review of Tony Monchinski’s “Eden: Crusade”
Eden: Crusade is the sequel to Tony Monchinski’s first novel, Eden, which was essentially a murder mystery set in the community of Eden, a walled and barricaded sanctuary in New York City during the zombie apocalypse. The saga continues in book two with several of the key characters who survived Eden, and the primary story in Crusade is of their journey north, out of the city, toward a place that promises to be a safe haven for them. We are also introduced to a sizable group of other survivors who end up connecting with the characters from the first book toward the end of this story. The novel is book ended by chapters that take place in the future, where Bear, one of the key characters of both book one and two, taking it upon himself to start a crusade to destroy every last one of the undead in existence.
Overall, the storytelling style of Crusade is similar to the first book. The author is unapologetic of what happens to his characters, taking them in whatever direction serves his story rather than parceling out mercy or softening his touch anywhere along the way. He gives each character, minor or major, tremendous depth, which is impressive given the volume of people the reader is presented with in between these pages. We gain new insights into the old characters from the first book, but newer characters like Steve, Eva, and Sonya are also fully formed and felt very real and vital to me. Tony Monchinski has the knack of creating characters that revel in their shades of gray. What I mean by this is that it appears that almost anyone is capable of doing anything good or evil, given the means and motivation, and Tony is willing to explore that, no matter how sentimental the readers may be about a character they have gotten to know. That may be tough to swallow at some points in this story, but it is something I respect a great deal, because it shows a willingness to push and keep pushing as far as is necessary to get the storytelling job done.
As I try to do with my reviews, I bring up what I felt didn’t work for me along with what did. With Crusade, surprisingly, what didn’t work for me was in the first chapter. The book begins with a massive and lopsided battle pitting two characters against a mob of the undead that numbers in the thousands. I felt that it went on longer than was necessary, with an extensive description of all the weapons used, every tactic examined. I think it had a visceral appeal to it, but after a few pages, it felt repetitive to me. It could have been condensed and had the same impact on the story in my humble opinion. I thought it was certainly a powerful opening, but again, could have been shortened and still worked quite well.
With that one minor gripe out of the way, I consider this book an excellent sequel to Tony’s impressive debut. Again, I say that this writer has a talent for developing characters that are fully formed and razor sharp. He also gives his stories a gritty realism that is unapologetic. I am excited to see what the third book of the Eden trilogy holds, and look forward to reading it with great anticipation.
Eden: Crusade can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Crusade-Eden-Book-Tony-Monchinski/dp/1934861332/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282884119&sr=1-1
Review of J.L. Bourne’s ‘Day by Day Armageddon Beyond Exile’
Day by Day Armageddon was one of the first books I read when I became interested in zombie literature, to go hand in hand with my fascination with zombie movies, almost exactly four years ago. As is the case with many people who enjoyed its personal approach to the apocalypse as told by an active officer in the military, I have waited all this time for the long hoped for sequel. Since J.L. Bourne is himself an active member of the military, my guess is that he was only able to write bits and pieces of this update of the saga between active tours of duty. While it may have been frustration for us fans of the first book to have waited this long, I have to say that the wait was well worth it.
An issue that some people had with the first book was perhaps the intentional diary approach to the book, with typos left in and even the text a bit rougher than you would get from a traditional novel. That is no longer an issue, as the format of this book is more traditional, with no errors in the text, intentional or not. I myself had no issues with that previously, but with it gone, it is one less point of criticism that someone may have with this type of storytelling. We once again get a diary of a military officer facing down the zombie apocalypse and this one picks up where the last journal ended, under ground, in the nuclear missile silo the author has dubbed Hotel 23, shortly after an attack by hostile survivors that failed to penetrate its defenses.
This is once again a personal journey of one man, with other people entering and exiting the story at different intervals. The characters in the first novel that are with the main character in Hotel 23 remain, but do not play a pivotal role here. The story has more dramatic swings to it than the previous tale, where it was mainly one man gathering who he could with him to find any place they could to survive. In this story, the military is reintroduced and play a huge role in the goings on of this tale. This allows the story to progress beyond what could have amounted to a group of people just trying to hide out underground for the duration of the apocalypse. Instead, the main character is required to make tough decisions and take on new responsibilities that will lead him away from H23 for the bulk of this tale and once again make this a intriguing saga of one man’s path, out in the open, during the zombie apocalypse.
My favorite character, and one which I am gathering much more will be revealed about in a future journal, is Saien, who our main character meets during his desperate travels and appears to be equally as capable (if not more so) than the main character at surviving in zed infested territory. His background is perhaps not completely shrouded in mystery, but it is clear there is more to the man than what the diary indicates. Suffice it to say, he is an interesting addition to the characters in the book, and the only one that shared a great deal of pages with the main character.
While there is a bit of romance afoot for our hero, it is certainly not a significant part of this journal. Personal interactions like that are kept to a minimum, with some character commentary that reveals bits and pieces, but the action is what the author targets, as is natural in a journal format such as this. While there is a great deal of military terminology, the author goes to significant lengths to make the layman, like me, feel comfortable with the equipment and hardware being used in the story. This is not a story about an every day guy beating the odds and surviving, but about someone who has gone through survival training, has a great familiarity with weaponry, hand to hand combat, and battle tactics most of us are not privy to, which makes this book fairly unique among most zombie stories written.
I personally enjoyed the gritty, personal perspective that this book and the previous novel have. A journal format does have its weaknesses: minimal dialogue, limited perspective, and by necessity, we know that the person who is penning the journal is okay because they continue to write about their exploits day after day. But done well, it is a compelling format, and it is hard to say that anyone out there does it any better than J.L. Bourne.
Day By Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile can be found on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/143917752X/ref=cm_cr_thx_view
Review for Iain McKinnon’s “Domain of the Dead”
Domain of the Dead begins with a group of survivors living in a warehouse that was stocked with food when the zombie apocalypse began. There were 27 survivors at one point but they are down to a handful of them and one, Sarah, has decided that it would be best to end it all, because their food is about to run out after being tucked away in this place for as long as they all have. She climbs up to the roof, ready to jump, and sees a helicopter off in the distance and the decision is quickly made to try and make a break for it to the helicopter, rather than starve to death by the few people left in the warehouse.
A few of them survive the quick and violent trip to the helicopter, with the help of the military personnel who had set down and were patrolling the area. Some are left behind, because the helicopter doesn’t have enough room for all of them, and they fade out of the story for the most part, as Sarah and a couple of other warehouse survivors: Nathan and a little girl named Jennifer, fly back to a ship where the military is running experiments on zombies, trying to discover a cure or vaccination against the mysterious ailment that causes the dead to rise. Not long after that,things go a little nuts and a breakout of the zombie virus has the survivors fighting for their lives as the ship becomes a graveyard of the undead.
The book is a fast paced, quick zombie read that clearly intends to have a sequel based on how the story ends. I thought it was unfortunate that the people left behind on the mainland were not returned to the spotlight in this book after the helicopter returns to the ship, and the entire focus was on what was happening on the ship. The author provides some interesting suggestions based on science as to why the dead were rising and a good chunk of the book is spent on that discussion in the second act. Unfortunately, that felt like a slight disruption to the plot, as we start out with a high octane beginning to the book as the survivors from the warehouse are rushing to escape the hordes and get to the helicopter and then there is a lull until the action starts again towards the final third of the book. While that is a bit of a criticism, as well as the lack of connection to those left behind back on the mainland, the story itself is entertaining and does provide some good zombie gore, guts, and action. I think this series of books, whether it is two or more, could be quite interesting, as the fate of those who remained behind will likely be revealed pretty early on in a second book and things certainly will be different for the survivors who had been on the ship. I just wish they had remained a part of the plot of this first book.
Domain of the Dead can be found on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934861278/ref=cm_cr_thx_view
Review of Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines
It’s always potential fun when someone tries to tie two popular genres together, but often time the fun ends once you get to see the end result and realize that what you have is a mishmash of ideas that never really mixed well. Not so here, with Ex-Heros. Peter Clines has created a very plausible set of superheros facing the zombie apocalypse and doing what they do best: saving the world. Its certainly a struggle for them, as there is no way to stop the zombie menace, but they’ve focused on creating a safe haven in Los Angeles at Paramount studios, aka The Mount, which is the most easily defensible place where they could bring hundreds to thousands of survivors. Opposed to them are the Seventeens, an old LA Gang that essentially controls the rest of LA, with their mysterious leader.
The story is told by switching back and forth from the present to the past, with each flashback done in first person and told from the perspective of a particular superhero. The story is given the opportunity to slowly reveal itself this way and had a flavor of Watchmen to it that really worked in this setting. Our superheros aren’t perfect-often they are sullen and none too happy with the people they are protecting, who don’t necessarily trust them. In addition to this, some of the superheros have fallen to the Ex virus, which started the zombie apocalypse in this story, and while they are not quite as powerful as they once were, they still present a sizable threat to both the human and superhero population in the story.
Clines does an excellent job of creating unique and believable hero’s for this tale, with The Great Dragon leading the pack. They may be studs physically, but there are plenty of warts that are revealed during the story, giving us some surprises along the way that impact the story dramatically.
I think this is one of the best genre cross-over stories I have read in some time and Clines, who indicated that many of the superheros created here came from his and friends childhood visions, clearly has a passion for both genres, and has created a very unique genesis to the zombie in this story that makes perfect sense and lands like a sledgehammer on the reader towards the end of the story.
There is no doubt that Clines could make this into a series, or just pull off a sequel, if he chooses. The characters are rich and involving and there is certainly much more to be revealed about all of them. Definitely recommended for the zombie and superhero fan alike.
Ex-Heros can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Ex-Heroes-Peter-Clines/dp/1934861286/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274810026&sr=1-1
