Surviving the apocalypse...

Recently, I’ve decided to go through my Kindle and delete anything that’s not up to par to try and clear out some of the dead wood. 

I have A LOT of books on there, and many I’ve never even read. These two were the first that I came across and both, like the majority of my books on there, were downloaded for free.

Book 34 for this year is Surviving the evacuation book one: London and tells the story of the zombie apocalypse, told from the viewpoint of a government aide, trapped in his apartment after breaking his leg.

The first half of this book is mostly his observations of how everything all went wrong, gathered from news footage and images sent to him by a secret government source, as he does his best to survive on his own, still believing that his best friend and the person he works for, Jen, will send someone to pick him up.

Once he starts to realise this is never going to happen, our protagonist decides to leave his apartment and what follows is his attempt to survive, and find refuge, against all odds.

To tell such a long story with only one character is, I think, a very brave move, but it’s one that kind of works. And though at times this book is not as action-packed as some other zombie thrillers I’ve read, nonetheless the author here does a very good job of keeping the story flowing and all in all this is a very well written piece that earns a very well deserved 3/5

If Surviving the evacuation is a good example of how to write a clever, original zombie novel, then book 35 for this year, Undead Nation, is the perfect example of how NOT to write one.

When an incident occurs not far from the school where Alex’s daughter goes to school, Alex heads off to rescue her only to discover that the whole world has started to go all to hell.

After successfully bringing her back home, Alex and his wife and daughter hit the road in an attempt to get out of the city, but their problems are only just beginning.

First off, this book was in dire need of a good edit with typos such as too instead of to and a couple of really quite elemental mistakes that a good editor would hopefully pick up.

This in itself would be forgivable if the story itself was sound, but unfortunately I personally felt it too quickly resorted to cliche, and there were a couple of moments where I just felt I couldn’t really connect with the characters.

There are other grievous errors here too.

When the main characters reach Alex’s in-laws for example, there is one moment in particular where two new characters get name-dropped with no previous explanation of who they are as if we, the reader should just know. 

Something else a good editor would hopefully pick up on.

I don’t give up on many books, but unfortunately I felt like I had to give up on this one. 

Whilst culling books on my kindle, I’m afraid I have to be ruthless and unfortunately this is the kind of rushed out book that gives self-pub a bad name.

No stars, simply because I couldn’t even get past the half-way point and this book did absolutely nothing to suck me in.