Eve of the Dead Book

Eve of the Dead is a tale of zombie apocalypse, as anyone could surmise by the name of the book. It takes place in northern Florida around the time the dead have begun to walk and tells the story of a group of five friends who are trying desperately to survive the ever increasing swarm of ghouls that are trying to wipe out humanity. Thrown in to the story's mix is a young couple who are also trying to survive in their small trailer out in the sticks as the government imposes Martial law and the National Guard and Police try to maintain control of the populous but are failing miserably.

To say that this story pays homage to the works of Romero would be inaccurate. Instead, this is closer to a carbon copy of one his most famous films: Dawn of the Dead. I would say that this work is a combination of both the original and the remake, with some elements of both poking through.

The young men take flight from their barricaded home and pull into one of the rescue stations as they begin to run out of food and hope. They flee the station when they realize it is a chaotic mess with the National Guard and civilians clashing constantly. They end up at a Wal-Mart Super Store (or Mall, for all intents and purposes), which is where any attempts to present a different story than "Dawn" is ditched entirely. Some of the identical traits to the one or the other of the "Dawn" movies:
-One of the characters ruminates why the zombies want in to the store so badly and comes up with this: perhaps because it was such an important place to them when they were alive.
-There is a character who is bitten and whose bandaged wound is squeezed mercilessly by another zombie later.
-There is a truck that is viewed by the characters bashing through the parking lot of the giant store via closed circuit televisions.
-For a brief time the characters all have fun frolicking in the store before everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
-The store is invaded by other human interlopers near the end and one character grows enraged, stating "This is our place now" before he starts firing at them.

Now I realize that some of these are minor details, but if you have ever seen either Dawn movie all of the above probably sounds familiar to you. I can understand wanting to pay tribute to the man who started it all but unfortunately Nathan Tucker has done so by making his story so similar to THE movie that is, along with "Night of the Living Dead", the foundation upon which all other zombie stories are built (at least in modern film and books). The characters were not tremendously well fleshed out or detailed in ways that make them memorable or unique and so my mind had a tendency to wander back to the movie this book mirrors so closely, which probably made it even easier for me to see all the glaring similarities.

A lot of the book is taken up with battle scenes with the undead. I am a fan of gore and enjoy its liberal usage in most of the books that populate this genre but I have never needed a shot by shot, blow by blow account of every bullet fired and every punch thrown especially when a good part of that particular book is about the main characters clearing and re-clearing out a giant superstore filled with the dead buggers. This is a prime example of where less would have truly been more. Pick out a few choice morsels of destruction to run with along with some of the more interesting attacks/kills and leave the rest to our imagination.

Now I come to the editing problems this book had. Overall, I give the author credit for making sure his grammar and punctuation were correct...for the most part. But though he succeeded in that regard he failed badly when it came to creative description of his characters. A thesaurus may have helped. As the previous reviewer pointed out quite accurately the author has about one or two ways of describing each person in the book; especially anyone who is physically larger than average. On one page alone the same character was described as "the big man" virtually every time he does or says anything, with "large" sprinkled in on occasion to perhaps break up the monotony. There are at least three "big men" in this book with the prerequisite "huge hands" and "large arms". There are other repeats and most either describe someone's size (thin, big, small, etc.) or their hair color (the young black haired man, the red headed man, etc.). To a certain extent it is reasonable to sprinkle that throughout a book but not in paragraph after paragraph ad nauseum.

So, you may be asking why two stars vs. one with all the negatives I have brought up. Well, the answer is that I do believe that this author does have some talent. Whether it will be realized in a future work remains to be seen but he CAN write and that shined through here every now and then. He desperately needs to make an effort to further develop his characters, get more creative with his descriptions of them, and avoid copying a grand master of the genre he is tackling. If he can manage all of that, Nathan Tucker might be able to pull off something interesting to read. Besides, I have to reserve one star for the truly horrid, which for me is "Aftermath of the Dead", which I could argue is one of the worst books ever written, let alone the worst zombie book ever put to paper. That this book has twice as many stars means it is something you can actually read with out your brains melting inside your skull and blood shooting out of your eye sockets. I cannot say the same for "Aftermath".

I would be willing to read another book produced by Mr. Tucker, but I sincerely hope he works hard to hone his craft before he gets published again.