Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "zombie"

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



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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
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Hounded by Ellie Douglas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What would you do if your beloved pet suddenly turns into a mortal enemy?! Kill him in the merciless fight of survival or give in to your emotions and serve yourself as a meal to his unquenched hunger and thirst for human flesh and blood?

Savage and brutal, Hounded by Ellie Douglas is a zombie horror novel of unique excellence! A bloody mayhem of gnawed skulls, snapped bones, torn bodies, scattered intestines and ripped extremities is described to a chilling detail. A dried stench of the walls and streets painted in human gore makes you gag on a scary drive through the streets and cities populated by someone's pets-turned-zombies.

This is the dusk of humankind, hounded by dead but very alive dogs and a virus. As we witness the gruesome destruction of one human individual after another, it's hard to feel sympathy for the whole human species. People liked dwarfism for exotic animals to have pet tigers, lions, elephants, giraffes.... But that idea came from the same laboratory as something else with a much higher price and dire consequences.

Even when the most dominate species on the planet becomes the species facing its sudden extinction, humans again showed their ugly face of robbing, scavenging, praying and killing one another. The weak beacon of hope lays in the hands of the few willing to sacrifice themselves for their beloved ones and the general good of complete strangers. Is that so different from our world? When will we learn the big lesson?

The transformation of the beloved dog Pepper into a living dead is remarkable. The end of the book is brilliant. No reason to delay purchasing and reading this gripping horror story!

BJ
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Bernard Jan

Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western by Jonathan Fesmire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I must admit I was skeptical when I decided to read a steampunk zombie western novel. I didn't know what to expect. Which turned out to be good because Jonathan Fesmire took me with Bodacious Creed to a journey which I rather liked!

As a teenager I devoured stories about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and Bodacious Creed proved it that nothing changed! I still like them, I still romanticize that wild, cruel and bloody part of the 19th century American history, in Bodacious Creed mixed with another genre I also like—the stories of zombies!

Bodacious Creed: A Steampunk Zombie Western novel takes place in an alternate universe, history follows a slightly altered course with both fictional and real-life characters blended into an exciting read. If you are a fan of the Wild West and zombies—or even if you are not— give Bodacious Creed a chance because you might become one! Not all walking deads are bad guys!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan



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Angel's Nightmare Adventure: Zero by Angel Ramon Medina

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


For the fans of video games comes another book from the seriesAngel's Nightmare Adventure! Angel Ramon blasts us to the past with the prequel Zero to Angel's Nightmare Adventure Amazon best-selling book, to the place and time where it all began. In Angel's Nightmare Adventure: Zero we are following again two parallel stories as we are led into the Clark Family Mansion in Upstate New York where the Raven Hawk Virus was first discovered.

Although GameLit is not among my favorite genres, I have to give Angel credit for keeping my attention and curiosity at full alert with a variety of human and human-made characters (zombies, dogs, snakes, web spinners, Polybius, Lizarda, flea drainers and other enemies of the human race) pacing through the stories as the battle for survival within the mansion culminates.

I won't reveal if there are any survivors of the Alpha and Bravo NYPD Special Forces team at the end of this story. The only spoiler you'll hear from me is that Angel's Nightmare Adventure doesn't end with Zero because Angel's Nightmare Adventure 1.5 is already available for pre-order!

Forgive me, I stand corrected. I have one more spoiler for you: both book covers for Angel's Nightmare Adventure: Zero and Angel's Nightmare Adventure 1.5 look darn good! They are a perfect addition to those dark horror stories!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Bernard Jan



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Angel's Nightmare Adventure 1.5 by Angel Ramon Medina

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If you are a fan of Angel Ramon Medina and his Angel’s Nightmare Adventure series, stay calm because you won’t be disappointed with his latest installment! On the second thought, don’t stay calm because Angel is true to himself in throwing high-packed action with plenty of killing and carcasses in front of you!

In Angel’s Nightmare Adventure 1.5 he takes you all the way to the beginning of the timeline of events leading up to the series which you can now purchase also as the Ultimate Nightmare Set. Cool, right?

So, don’t delay, grab one (or all his nightmare books) and get ready to play the game! Zombies are waiting for you!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Bernard Jan