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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
START INTERCEPT
Armies of undead have risen up across the U.S. and around the globe: there is no safe haven from the diseased corpses hungering for human flesh. But in the heat of a Texas wasteland, a small band of survivors attempt to counter the millions closing in around them.
INTERCEPT COMPLETE
SURVIVOR.
Day by day, the handwritten journal entries of one man caught in a worldwide cataclysm capture the desperation – and the will to survive – as he joins forces with a handful of refugees to battle soulless enemies both human and inhuman from inside an abandoned strategic missile facility.
BUT IN THE WORLD OF THE UNDEAD, IS MERE SURVIVAL ENOUGH?
The sequel to DAY BY DAY ARMAGEDDON picks up right where the first novel left off, with the unnamed narrator and his fellow survivors in Hotel 23 (an abandoned Texan nuclear missile base) cleaning up after successfully repelling an attack by a gang of survivors intent on taking over from them. With the zombie plague still virulent, the narrator and his friends forage ever wider for day-to-day essentials both for themselves and for the additional survivors they rescue.
When Hotel 23 makes contact with a group of Marines and the narrator is forced to return to his role as a military officer. However when a mission goes wrong, he finds himself hundreds of kilometres from his friends with thousands of zombies standing in his way. His journal entries detail his attempts to survive and the unexpected allies he meets along the way.
I hadn’t read DAY BY DAY ARMAGEDDON, but an author’s note summarises the events, making it easy to catch up. Although the plot is simple – essentially a survival journey - Bourne’s own military background gives it a great deal of credibility, particularly the detail on weaponry and military protocol. A scene set on a naval carrier is particularly well done, as is the description of a zombie swarm (consisting of hundreds of thousands of dead). If there’s a criticism it’s that Bourne veers between over-explaining military terminology and not explaining it at all, which makes the story-telling uneven at times.
The journal format suits the stark, pared down prose style. The narrator is not an emotional man (which means this isn’t a book for those wanting an examination of the emotions of survival) and he glosses over the more intimate moments with regard to his burgeoning relationship with Tara. His intellectual insights on what is happening though are interesting, particularly when he considers his current life against his former ‘normal’ one.
There are some nice graphic touches within the book, with blood spatters on those journal pages that follow particularly tense situations and different text formats used to draw out different events.
The book ends with a promise that the final volume of this trilogy will move the action to China and the source of the zombie plague. Based on the absorbing events in this book, I will definitely be looking to pick up a copy.
The Verdict:
Although there isn’t a huge amount of emotional depth to the story and the plot is a simple one, this is an absorbing story of survival against incredible odds and the author’s military background gives it great credibility. With the book’s climax promising a switch of location to China and a hunt for the cause of the outbreak in the concluding volume of this trilogy, I will definitely be tuning in to see how things turn out for the unnamed hero.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free copy of this book.
Armies of undead have risen up across the U.S. and around the globe: there is no safe haven from the diseased corpses hungering for human flesh. But in the heat of a Texas wasteland, a small band of survivors attempt to counter the millions closing in around them.
INTERCEPT COMPLETE
SURVIVOR.
Day by day, the handwritten journal entries of one man caught in a worldwide cataclysm capture the desperation – and the will to survive – as he joins forces with a handful of refugees to battle soulless enemies both human and inhuman from inside an abandoned strategic missile facility.
BUT IN THE WORLD OF THE UNDEAD, IS MERE SURVIVAL ENOUGH?
The sequel to DAY BY DAY ARMAGEDDON picks up right where the first novel left off, with the unnamed narrator and his fellow survivors in Hotel 23 (an abandoned Texan nuclear missile base) cleaning up after successfully repelling an attack by a gang of survivors intent on taking over from them. With the zombie plague still virulent, the narrator and his friends forage ever wider for day-to-day essentials both for themselves and for the additional survivors they rescue.
When Hotel 23 makes contact with a group of Marines and the narrator is forced to return to his role as a military officer. However when a mission goes wrong, he finds himself hundreds of kilometres from his friends with thousands of zombies standing in his way. His journal entries detail his attempts to survive and the unexpected allies he meets along the way.
I hadn’t read DAY BY DAY ARMAGEDDON, but an author’s note summarises the events, making it easy to catch up. Although the plot is simple – essentially a survival journey - Bourne’s own military background gives it a great deal of credibility, particularly the detail on weaponry and military protocol. A scene set on a naval carrier is particularly well done, as is the description of a zombie swarm (consisting of hundreds of thousands of dead). If there’s a criticism it’s that Bourne veers between over-explaining military terminology and not explaining it at all, which makes the story-telling uneven at times.
The journal format suits the stark, pared down prose style. The narrator is not an emotional man (which means this isn’t a book for those wanting an examination of the emotions of survival) and he glosses over the more intimate moments with regard to his burgeoning relationship with Tara. His intellectual insights on what is happening though are interesting, particularly when he considers his current life against his former ‘normal’ one.
There are some nice graphic touches within the book, with blood spatters on those journal pages that follow particularly tense situations and different text formats used to draw out different events.
The book ends with a promise that the final volume of this trilogy will move the action to China and the source of the zombie plague. Based on the absorbing events in this book, I will definitely be looking to pick up a copy.
The Verdict:
Although there isn’t a huge amount of emotional depth to the story and the plot is a simple one, this is an absorbing story of survival against incredible odds and the author’s military background gives it great credibility. With the book’s climax promising a switch of location to China and a hunt for the cause of the outbreak in the concluding volume of this trilogy, I will definitely be tuning in to see how things turn out for the unnamed hero.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free copy of this book.
