Reviews for Blood of the Dead: A Zombie Novel (Undead World Trilogy, Book One)

The average rating for Blood of the Dead: A Zombie Novel (Undead World Trilogy, Book One) based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-11-05 00:00:00 Ernesto Herrera This is the beginning of a trilogy and I felt after reading this story that 90% of it was a set up for what comes with very few pages left in this first book. What we have is what is essentially a character driven zombie story where we are introduced to four main characters who end up coming together through the course of this novel to join forces to face off against the dead in Winnipeg, Canada. They have all survived a year after a grey soup of a rain fell and instantly killed many people, turning into zombies immediately. Most others died afterwards in the carnage but a part of the city remains safe, called Haven. Three of our characters live there, Joe, who sees himself as a angel of vengeance, having fashioned his own hand cannon to blast the undead back to the just dead. There is Des, a video game warrior who wishes he was a real hero but has spent most of his time behind a computer screen since the world collapsed, and Billie, a young punker girl with Pink hair who is also a net junky that has had little use for much in the way of human interaction. August is the fourth character here, an older man who was forced to kill his entire family when they all turned into zombies after they all fled into the woods an hour outside the city. Now he has returned and our four characters are thrust together when all the undead, which had mostly be relegated to the inner city have come searching for anyone still alive. Much of this book is spent with the characters running and fighting the undead. It also is spent with many of the younger characters acting hyper moody with each other, which may be realistic given the grim circumstances but if I am going to be critical about this story it lies here. August is frustrated with God and wondering where he has been this entire time while these three young people barely seem able to get along long enough to help each other survive. After a while all their pouting and moodiness started to get on my nerves. But it did not kill the story for me. The author did a good job of fleshing out these characters and the pain each one of them are going through in this new undead world. As I mentioned earlier, I got the sense that all of this was introductory effort on the author's part because we really get to the meat of what is going to make this trilogy tick in about the last thirty pages or so. I will admit it gets somewhat confusing, which of course just translates into a cliff hanger ending and a lot of unanswered questions that often come with a trilogy. I will not go into detail but suffice it to say we are exposed to some supernatural elements that will have to play a very heavy duty role in book's two and three. Overall, I enjoyed this story. There is gore galore and plenty of action for those who crave that in their zombie stories. The author has unleashed a few variations on the zombie theme with hints and more obvious introductions towards the end of your not so regular dead human's brought back to life that I will be curious to see more of. AP Fuchs does a good job in writing his story and he is able to build up the suspense quite well. There is enough here for me to be quite interested in part II and part III when they are published. I just hope that we do not have to wait too long for the next installment, since he does leave you hanging at the end of this novel.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-02-23 00:00:00 Richard Houser This novel starts off as your traditional zombie fare with a different take on how the outbreak started. In Fuchs' universe, clouds appear, followed by rain that somehow transforms people into the living dead. Long after the storm, the clouds remain and the world is a much darker place. A group of survivors live in an apparently open area of a city that they call Haven. The people in Haven live seperately to avoid attention from the undead and communicate via the internet. Haven suddenly comes under attack by the living dead in force. While this is happening, the survivors also discover that the epidemic has crossed over the species block. Four people try to survive the increasingly dangerous plague. Pretty standard to that point, but later in the book Fuchs crosses into some strange things. I'll read the sequel when it comes out. I just hope it either avoids the odd things he began to delve into later in this novel or at least makes some sense of them.