Iain McKinnon is the author of two of my favourite Zombie books of all time, Domain of the Dead and Remains of the Dead, so when I saw the third part of his trilogy in a charity shop the other day I just knew I had to have it.
Demise of the Living is different from Iain's previous two novels in that it is set at the very start of the outbreak, rather than several years after, and so almost works as a prequel - following what happens to a small group of survivors as they slowly come together to seek refuge in an office building, in a desperate bid to try and escape the zombie hordes outside.
Right from the outset, there is friction.
Power plays, already existent in the office, begin to take their toll on those trapped inside as the survivors struggle to agree on...well, practically anything...but this is just the start of their worries when it quickly becomes apparent that some amongst their number are already infected!!!!
Who lives? Who dies? There's only one way to find out...
I really enjoyed this book, even if the early part of the plot pretty much reads a little bit zombie-by-numbers - but thankfully Iain throws in more than a few surprises until, by the end, the reader is left reeling with the scope of everything that has just happened and is forced to face the very real prospect of just how far someone will go to survive.
Is it as good as his previous two zombie books? No.
Is it better than two-thirds of the other Zombie books out there? Definitely.
If you have read and enjoyed the first two books in this series, I fully reccomend you give this a go and if you haven't, this is the perfect book to start with knowing the other two books are set much later and several years after the events depicted here.
The only bit I found frustrating is the way, with one set of characters, the action jumps ahead a few hours without satisfyingly filling in what happened in between, but other than that this was a very good read.
4 stars out of 5, helped tremendously by THAT ending...
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