Twilight of the Dead Review

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(More customer reviews)As a fan of all-things-zombie for over twenty years I had never experienced "zombie fiction" before, and eagerly scoured the Amazon reviews of probably the exact same books you have already looked at. After reading the glowing reviews of this book I discounted the amateurish cover art and immediately ordered it.
Upon arrival the first thing I noticed once I began perusing the first few pages was the size of the font. I'm sure I'm being nit-picky but it seemed to me that a larger size font was chosen to maximize the number of pages - slim still at just over 200 pages. This, coupled with the actual dimensions of the book and the heretofore cited simplistic cover art just gave me the feeling I was holding something aimed at a much younger audience. Don't get me wrong, I fully realize this is a book about the Zombie Apocalypse, but I guess I expected something a little more literary after seeing reviews calling it the "best book I ever read" and throwing out phrases like "metaphysical subjectivism." I have to wonder what other "books" these reviewers tend to read.
As for the story, I will admit it is enjoyable for what it offers. However, some things had me wondering "wait, didn't they just say.." and "that doesn't seem right, wouldn't they have..." a little too often. I felt like I was reading a second or third draft where the plot hadn't been cemented nor the holes filled in. And my god, please use a proofreader in future. I can forgive an overlooked comma but there were too many instances where something that should have been caught actually took me out of the story wondering if maybe I had read it wrong. The biggest offender being a cliffhanger-type situation closing out a chapter - "But he had been bitten!" instead was printed "But he had bitten!" which made no sense in the context of the scene and really ruined the tension of the moment.
Character-wise it was refreshing to have a female protagonist, but I was struck by the fact that seemingly every male in her life, excluding her father, either wanted to have sex with her or already had. Seemed a bit banal to me. I found myself rolling my eyes every time another newly introduced male character threw out a clichéd come-on or uttered a moronic innuendo. Enough.
Bottom line: it's a fairly enjoyable read if you can get past the overall unpolished feeling and glaring editorial oversights.
I just glanced down at the next part of this review form, where it says "I am over the age of 13." A very applicable phrase with which to end this .

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Courtney Colvin was nearing the end of her teenage years when the undead apocalypse began. She survived, forsaking her youth and innocence, and five years later she continues to exist--albeit lonely--in the fortified town of Eastpointe. Nightmares and the unwelcome advances of Leon Wolfe are the worst things she's dealing with now in her otherwise mundane life. But when a newcomer arrives in town and claims to know the location of the antidote to the zombie plague, it sends Eastpointe into an uproar. To retrieve this cure, she and a group of other survivors must venture outside the relative safety of the compound's walls and into a world ruled and dominated by the flesh-eating undead. Twilight of the Dead puts a new spin on the zombie genre, yet remains true to the classic rules that have already been set forth. A sure-fire reading pleasure for anyone who loves character-driven horror. This Special Edition contains an Introduction by David Moody and three bonus short stories detailing important moments in the lives of other survivors

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Allison Hewitt Is Trapped: A Zombie Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)This is such a fun book on so many levels! This is what literary fiction should be. It gives you so much to think about. . . how would I react in a similar survivalist situation? The zombies were almost just placeholders for me. You could replace zombies with almost any disaster. The hidden message for me was, "Who is the real enemy?" I absolutely loved how the mother issue was dealt with, very realistic and so beautiful. It's the kind of book that gives you research too if one is so inclined. Each chapter is the name of a classic book. OK, this was just a wonderful adventure story too! I read this book in 24 hours and wish I could pick up the sequel right now! This book is better than the "Twilight" series which I must admit I liked a lot too. This is an author to watch. Good stuff!

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Tooth And Nail Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a fan of both the military fiction and zombie tale genres and DiLouie's Tooth and Nail delivers both in spades.
Here's what is so cool about this novel:
1. Very realistic -- this may be about zombies, but it's not some supernatural gore-dripper -- it's about soldiers and a very scary what-if...
2. Non-stop action -- this book will never make Oprah's Book of the Month club, but I would like to name a roller coaster after it -- from the get-go, the action and tension are unrelenting and the doggone book feels glued to your hands. (NOTE: Thanks, Mr. DiLouie -- on my first reading, I finally finished your book at 4 am with sweaty palms and had trouble getting to work on time the next day -- on the second reading, I still couldn't take my time and finished it again in one marathon Saturday reading session.)
3. Better & better -- I've read some of DiLouie's past work and this is by far his best work -- the writing is tight, descriptive without being florid & puffy, and believable -- again, not a book that will draw people together on a Tuesday evening for white wine and canapes, but a kick-ass story that is well-written and doesn't stop til you get back in the station and the lap-bars retract as you put the book down for the final time.
Rock on, DiLouie -- hope you've got more in the pipeline!

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This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but a slaughter.As a new plague related to the rabies virus infects millions, America recalls its military forces from around the world to safeguard hospitals and other vital buildings. Many of the victims become rabid and violent but are easily controlled-that is, until so many are infected that they begin to run amok, spreading slaughter and disease. Lieutenant Todd Bowman got his unit through the horrors of combat in Iraq. Now he must lead his men across New York through a storm of violence to secure a research facility that may hold a cure. To succeed in this mission to help save what's left, the men of Charlie Company will face a terrifying battle of survival against the very people they have sworn to protect-people turned into a fearless, endless horde armed solely with tooth and nail.For the boys of Charlie Company, the zombie apocalypse will give a whole new meaning to the proverb WAR IS HELL.

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The Infection Review

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(More customer reviews)The Infection by Craig DiLouie tells the story of six survivors traveling in an armored vehicle, while trying to find a safe refuge, after a mysterious virus infects millions of humans. The infected people collapse into comas; when they wake up, three days later, they attack all the non-infected. After just a couple of weeks, some of the survivors discover that the Infected are mutating into something much worse than zombies. The main theme that is woven throughout the storyline is the violent transformation of humans into monsters.
"There were things in the garage, Sarge. [censored] monsters. Dark shapes that flitted around the cars, always just out of sight. Then we saw one..."
This novel made me think, "This is what happened to the rest of the world, while everyone was reading about what happened in the grocery store in The Mist by Stephen King." I know I'm not the only one who has made this comparison; some other reviewers have even mentioned The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I understand why, but I think DiLouie goes into far more detail with his characters' suffering than King or McCarthy. The story is told with third-person narration in the present tense; flashbacks provide the personal backgrounds of each of the six survivors. Their reasoning and motivation for their current behavior becomes quite understandable, after only a few chapters.
"They have all done the things one had to do to survive. They have all killed people or they would not be here."
I usually try to imagine myself in the world that I am reading about, but I wanted no part of this setting. Living infected hordes are one thing, but DiLouie describes abominations that would rival HP Lovecraft's leviathans. He goes to nightmarish extremes when pairing the brutal twists of the viral outbreak with the amorality of various people that the survivors encounter. Of course, even though I felt mentality assaulted by the end, I loved reading very moment of this traumatic horror novel.

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Five ordinary people must pay the price of survival at the end of the world.A mysterious virus suddenly strikes down millions. Three days later, itsvictims awake with a single purpose: spread the Infection. As the worldlurches toward the apocalypse, some of the Infected continue to change,transforming into horrific monsters. In one American city, asmall group struggles to survive. Sarge, a tank commander hardened byyears of fighting in Afghanistan. Wendy, a cop still fighting for lawand order in a lawless land. Ethan, a teacher searching for his lostfamily. Todd, a high school student who sees second chances in the endof the world. Paul, a minister who wonders why God has forsaken hischildren. And Anne, their mysterious leader, who holds an almostfanatical hatred for the Infected.Together, they fight theirway to a massive refugee camp where thousands have made a stand. There,what's left of the government will ask them to accept a mission thatwill determine the survival of them all--a dangerous journey back ontothe open road and into the very heart of Infection.

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Ex-Heroes Review

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(More customer reviews)Ex-Heroes, the debut novel from Peter Clines, offers a new spin on the typical zombie story. Set in modern times, a zombie outbreak has ravaged the earth and only a handful of superheroes have kept the situation in Los Angeles from deteriorating into total chaos. Reeling from losses in their own community, a band of heroes has established a fortified safe zone in Hollywood to help whatever survivors they find. Unfortunately so has a much larger group of gang members, who have some deadly tricks up their sleeves.
Now, mixing superheroes and zombies isn't an entirely new concept, but unlike Marvel Zombies, Ex-Heroes takes the idea seriously and is a story you can actually believe. Ex-Heroes reads like a mix of Watchmen (or maybe Heroes) and Land of the Dead. It's more of a big screen movie type story than the typical tale of survival horror, but I mean that in the best possible way. Clines's story of very human, very flawed heroes trying to maintain order in a post-apocalyptic situation seems very realistic and would make a terrific movie. I love how the book is split between "then" and "now" chapters, with the "then" chapters told from the perspective of a different hero and chronicling the developing crisis.
Clines has come up with a fascinating cast of characters who, despite being superheroes, all seem like real people. I also loved the pace of the book, the believable dialogue, the black humor (a running contest to see who bagged the most famous zombie, for example), and the unexpected plot twists that never seemed forced or clichéd. I'm already anxious for a sequel.
Ex-Heroes is a fantastic superhero novel, a fantastic zombie novel, and just a great story altogether. You know those books where you're only a few pages in and you realize "oh yeah, this author knows what s/he's doing"? They're few and far between, but Ex-Heroes is definitely one of them. If you're a fan of superheroes or zombies (or better yet, both), Ex-Heroes is a must-read.


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Stealth. Gorgon. Regenerator. Cerberus. Zzzap. The Mighty Dragon. They were heroes. Vigilantes. Crusaders for justice, using their superhuman abilites to make Los Angeles a better place. Then the plague of living death spread around the globe. Despite the best efforts of the superheroes, the police, and the military, the hungry corpses rose up and overwhelmed the country. The population was decimated, heroes fell, and the city of angels was left a desolate zombie wasteland like so many others. Now, a year later, the Mighty Dragon and his companions must overcome their differences and recover from their own scars to protect the thousands of survivors sheltered in their film studio-turned-fortress, the Mount. The heroes lead teams out to scavenge supplies, keep the peace within the walls of their home, and try to be the symbols the survivors so desperately need. For while the ex-humans walk the streets night and day, they are not the only threat left in the world, and the people of the Mount are not the only survivors left in Los Angeles. Across the city, another group has grown and gained power. And they are not heroes.

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Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile (Book 2) Review

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(More customer reviews)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.

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The first book ofDay by Day Armageddontook us deep into the mind of a military officer and survivor as he made a New Year's resolution to start keeping a journal. The man kept his resolution and brought to us the fall of humanity, day by day. We see the man transition from the life that you and I live to the prospect of fighting for his very survival against the overwhelming hordes of the dead. We see him bleed, we see him make mistakes, we witness him evolve. The highly anticipated sequel to the bestselling underground cult classic,Day by Day Armageddonbegins where the first novel left off.BEGIN INTERCEPT

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