Mavis is just your average, ordinary teenage girl with all the usuals teenage hopes, dreams, worries, and aspirations until one day she drinks dirty water from a tap.
Suddenly she finds herself becoming seemingly obsessed with food - to the point where even her close family and friends begin to smell like food - and soon, she starts to develop an insatiable appetite she just can’t seem to satisfy.
The more she eats, the more she seems to need - and as the days and weeks progress, things go from bad to worse, especially when even her new boyfriend begins to smell like meat.
Something is very wrong with Mavis and the worst thing?
Slowly she can feel herself starting to lose all control...
This was an interesting book and a very different spin on the whole Zombie genre. If you have read my review of the movie, Contracted, in an earlier post then you will know where this story is going - but being what I assume is a teen-read, this book is a whole less gory and gross-out than that particular movie even if it follows a similar theme.
Did I enjoy it enough to read more in the series? I’m unsure as I didn’t exactly feel like I fitted the target audience and kept feeling this book was more aimed at teenage girls, themselves going through physical changes and no doubt feeling a bit like Mavis herself does at times - hopefully without the craving for flesh.
Was it a good read though? Definitely yes, and the author did a good job of keeping me reading right up until the inevitable end even though I’d called it long before I got there.
Certainly I’m interested enough to want to know where Mavis goes from here, so will probably pick up the next book at some point.
For now though, this book gets a solid 3/5 stars, even if it wasn’t entirely for me.
***
Much better is Jonathan Mberry’s The King of Plagues.
I first read Patient Zero, the first Joe ledger, book a couple of years ago at my brother-in-law’s recommendation and though I enjoyed it, thought it was only okay and no more. Then I read the short story, Rot and Ruin by the same author in an anthology I’d picked up and was suitably impressed.
I became determined to give the author another go, but it took me until a few days ago to actually get round to it.
King of Plagues is actually the third Joe Ledger book and is set just after a recent personal loss. Ledger is taking some time out from his full-time job at the Department of Military Science when tragedy strikes in the form of a terrorist attack on the world famous Royal London hospital, leaving it no more than a pile of smoking rubble at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.
Ledger is asked to assist the investigation, but soon discovers it is just the first phase in a series of new terror attacks by a sinister syndicate, supposed to replicate the mythical Ten Plagues of Egypt.
When Ledger himself is attacked, it soon becomes apparent that there are enemies everywhere and no-one can be trusted, not even those supposedly on the same side. And as the attacks continue to escalate, it quickly becomes clear - time is rapidly running out and for the D.M.S as well as the rest of the world, the clock is ticking...
This was nothing short of a brilliant read that kept me gripped from beginning to end. I read this in two days and quite simply, could not put it down - to the point where I have even gone out and purchased the previous two books in the series so I can catch up before reading more books in the series including Patient Zero, the book I was previously not quite so impressed with.
In many ways, Maberry’s character, Joe Ledger, reminds me here of John Connolly’s own Charlie Parker and there are more than a few similarities to Connolly’s work with a paranormal twist to this tale that is never suitably explained, so if you are a fan of that author I’d certainly give this a go.
Ledger also slightly minds me of F.Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack, and that is no bad thing either.
The bio-terrorism aspects of this book were highly believable and if I were to sum up this book in one word, it would be tense. The action and the drama never lets up, even for a second, and with this book, Maberry has definitely bought himself a new fan and I will definitely, definitely be reading more by him in 2019, there is no question about that.
In fact, I loved this book so much that I am even putting it on my own oft-neglected personal 1001 books and authors list to read before you die.
And you can’t get a better recommendation than that...
5/5 stars and one of the best books I have read all year!!!
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