Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "l-t-vargus"

The Scattered and the Dead by Tim McBain

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


That surprises come in small packages we can say with certainty for The Scattered and the Dead by Tim McBain and L.T. Vargus. But don't be too much surprised to see that this review, despite my best intentions, contains some spoilers.

The Scattered and the Dead (Book 0.5) has only 162 pages, but each page is carefully and meticulously thought over. It starts with the young man John Decker, who is writing a letter to an unknown girl (his neighbor), in a very unusual manner. He tells her that he sees her, sometimes feels like he knows her but he doesn't know how to say hi to her. Immediately after the opening sentences he starts describing to her the painful and realistically graphic death of his mother.

Decker is an introvert and he cannot fit into society. Even though he is good with saving money, he lives in his fortress of an apartment, where he is anonymous and no one knows about him. He is writing a letter to the girl three doors down across the hall, with whom he is trying to make a contact while watching the world go to shit on TV. The world is facing apocalypse, people are bleeding to death, zombies are eating people's faces, and he doesn't know how to connect with anyone.

He has endless supplies ordered from Amazon and he feels rather safe in his apartment when the face of the world, and consequently his life, rapidly changes. New deliveries stop to arrive, an old man sprays blood all over the sidewalk in front of his building, journalists wearing surgical masks report about riots and human misery everywhere. No one puts out the fire which devours the apartment building across the street, the power keeps cutting out until it goes out in the middle of the night and the big silence creeps in.

With such detailed descriptions of an apocalypse at the time of the plague, McBain and Vargus build suspense around their one main character who, as the world slides into its final days of civilization, becomes lonelier and lonelier. It makes me wonder what all goes on in the night, in the dark, in all of the places where my eyes can’t go. (. . .) Please help me find someone. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t want to be alone forever.

The horrific beauty of this book, unlike other zombie books, does not focus on the gory imagery of human degradation and destruction of our world. Those images coexist and function as a backdrop, while the true horror is that of a psychological nature of an unsocialized and abandoned 25 years old Derek who cannot stand the burden of loneliness in the world which completely belongs to him. Behold the loneliness. The only thing that’s left. The only thing that was ever real if you stripped away the novelties and distractions, maybe.

As the world around him crumbles further to pieces, Derek finds in himself strength to survive: But I’ve seen how things can change, how they must change, how all things must come to ash, how the old ways can die out and become something new. And I know I can change. I can transform. And so I will. And so he does transform, sometimes unaware of his actions which function on the most primal level. But he realizes and acknowledges the change that is happening not only in the world around him but within his lonely state as well. I started this letter in a lonely state, surrounded by people, literally in a building crawling with them, a city full of them, but unsure how to connect with them, how to really know any of them. And I end this letter in a lonely state, a different kind of lonely with no one around for miles. Apart from the dead bodies, I guess.

He is becoming someone else, an unknown person who not only manages to conquer his fears from both living people and the piles of dead bodies mass murdered in a government camp, but he also doesn't flinch in using a weapon to defend his survival, even finding rush and fun in killing other human beings.

McBain and Vargus have created a spectacularly creepy psychological and apocalyptic novella full of anxiety. Though from a different perspective, it brings to our mind a memory on the literary classic The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The biggest question we ask ourselves at the end of The Scattered and the Dead (Book 0.5) is who are the true winners in this story – the ones who mercifully (or not) fell victims or its survivor(s). For, living in a big wide world full of dead bodies of the disease-plagued mankind is not a prospect we should look forward to. Unless we are able to mentally transform into something we aren't, bared to our basic instinct.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan

The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): Post Apocalyptic Fiction by Tim McBain

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): Post Apocalyptic Fiction by Tim McBain and L.T. Vargus is a 634-pages-long post apocalyptic saga that warms your heart, chills your bones, makes your skin crawl and stomach churn.

Post apocalyptic might not be the totally-one-hundred-percent-and-absolutely right word, though, because the apocalypse happened, is happening and is going to happen, depending which story we read, which characters we follow, centered around the massive and ultimate doom of mankind.

What I love about McBain’s and Vargus’ writing is the poetry of transformation of the characters, events and their environment. “Action scenes” at the eve of destruction are nothing like low-rated action movies or books. Mitch, Erin, Travis, Baghead and others are not just scattered temporary survivors trying to outlive the infected teeth and stale breath of the new zombie era. Some of them touch us, some of them make us laugh, others annoy us as it should be in the real world. And that's how it is in their real world.

Although The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1) is a lengthy book, at times slow with not much going on, it keeps pulling you further and deeper into, simply demanding from a reader to cross the finish line. Except, there is no finish line.

Unavoidably, we part with some humans and humans-turned-zombies along the way into the uncertain future of the American Zombieland. However, some of them keep going, marching through the green, shabby or dead grass, driving through once crammed and then empty roads, scavenging or hiding in abandoned houses populated with occasional decaying or dried up bodies, or just leaving the nuked cities behind. Scattered but not yet dead.

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan

If you haven't tried to format an e-book, you wouldn't believe what a pain it can be. I wish I could describe differently how I feel about it, but I don’t want to use those words.

I am so tempted to destroy everything I did so far and start for the fourth or fifth time from scratch; this is what I will probably do in the end. I cannot stand the sight of the blank pages and weirdly aligned sections and chapters. If only I wasn't that eager to learn it so I will be able to do it by myself, while having the help of my friends who I am bugging every now and then, my book would already be finalized for marketing and almost out by now.

But it is not. It still needs to be done and perfected because I am a perfectionist. I am not going to publish or sell it until I know that I did my best within my limited knowledge and abilities.

So, if you ask me, when it will be, I can merely tell you that it is in the making and it will come out before I drive everyone around me, myself included, totally crazy.

While we all wait for a miraculous appearance of my soon-to-formatted-e-book A World Without Color, I invite you to take notice of these other four recently published books. I haven't read all of them yet but I surely will (currently I am reading one of them), and I would like you to read them too. Angel, Trish, Dario, Tim and L.T. deserve your attention. Thank you!

Janus: The Devil's Election by Angel Ramon Medina
It's September 11, 2016, only 2 months away from the most controversial election in the history of the United States. Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton are both running for office, but they both could not be any more hated by the American public. Meanwhile, an organization called the Terrorist Killers are investigating a substance known as the stem-cell substance. It supposedly extends the lifespan of a human being and be the next great breakthrough in genetic engineering.

Death by Default by Trish Reeb
An online game turns deadly. To fill the void following his divorce, Detective Conner Smyth plays chess with anonymous opponents. The stakes soar when white chess pieces turn up on murder victims. The problem? Conner's never won a game. His search for a master player leads to a ten-year-old chess champion. To what extremes will he go to stop a serial killer? Risk a boy's life, betray his partner, lose a new love interest... before someone he cares about dies?

Dead Men Naked by Dario Cannizzaro
After the sudden death of his best friend Neil, involving a 6-foot giant crow and quite some Tequila, Lou's life takes an unexpected turn towards the impossible. As Lou discovers his unwelcome gift to see Neil's ghost, he starts to question his sanity; but the real challenge is just coming up. Mallory, a self-proclaimed medium, offers her services to help Neil pass over. Drunk on spirit, lust, and hope, Lou agrees to perform a ritual, which, unforeseen, leaves him alone to face death.

Dead End Girl by L.T. Vargus, Tim McBain
The most recent body was discovered in the grease dumpster behind a Burger King. Dismembered. Shoved into two garbage bags and lowered into the murky oil. Now rookie agent Violet Darger gets the most important assignment of her career. She travels to the Midwest to face a killer unlike anything she's seen. Aggressive. Territorial. Deranged and driven. Another mutilated corpse was found next to a roller rink. A third in the gutter in a residential neighborhood. These bold displays of violence shock the rural community and rattle local law enforcement.

The picture of a mouse I am attaching to this blog post as a gift for you. This is what Anita's cat brought to us yesterday while we formatted my book at her place. The joys of direct formatting! No wonder instructions say never use direct formatting.

No worries, we did not use the mouse for the formatting!

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!

Bernard Jan

The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1.5): Post Apocalyptic Fiction by Tim McBain

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In the cold winter aftermath of zombie outbreak, one woman is struggling with her sanity and humanity. A few months before, one mother is putting on stake everything to rush her dying child to the hospital. There are a few other scattered and isolated individual characters, still alive, but for how long?

The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1.5): Post Apocalyptic Fiction is yet another beautifully written volume of Tim McBain's and L.T. Vargus' zombie saga which leaves you holding your breath as you slide through its snow and silence encrusted pages. It's scariest part is not what the walking dead can do to you but how solitude and loneliness can affect your mind and the ability of survival in the world that has forcefully gone to sleep.

Bj
www.bernardjan.com

Bernard Jan



View all my reviews